Unacademy announces job cuts: Read CEO Gaurav Munjal’s letter to employees

Online education major Unacademy will cut 10% of its workforce due to “harsh economic conditions”, the company told employees in a letter. This is the second round of job cuts this year at the company. Unacademy had cut more than 600 jobs in April this year. Softbank-backed company has tried to curb spending on marketing and control operational costs but it was not enough, founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal said in the letter. Unacademy, which was set up in 2015 and has raised funding from Softbank among other investors. Here’s the letter CEO Gaurav Munjal sent to employees:
Dear team members,
We are no strangers to the harsh economic conditions that everyone is witnessing these days. These are very difficult times for the technology ecosystem. And things are getting worse with each passing day.
Even though we realised this much earlier and took some stringent measures such as reducing our monthly burns, controlling our operational spends, limiting our marketing budgets and identifying other redundancies within the organisation, it was not enough. We need to keep optimising and building efficient systems for leaner and unprecedented times.
I am deeply saddened to share that we will have to say goodbye to some of our extremely talented Unacademy employees. These would be across the Unacademy Group from verticals where we have to take a difficult decision either to scale down or shut.
Around 10% of Unacademy employees across the group will be impacted because of this, and if you are one of the impacted – you will be receiving a detailed communication within 48 hours from HR.

I want to apologise to everyone sincerely since we made a commitment of no layoffs in the organisation but the market challenges have forced us to reevaluate our decisions. Funding has significantly slowed down and a large portion of our core business has moved offline.
This decision has not been easy and I take complete responsibility. You have contributed immensely to the success of Unacademy and the team will always be indebted to you. There is no easy way to do this and this is definitely not the kind of separation I would have wanted. We will do our best to help everyone in these difficult times. The parting team members will receive the following:
1. Severance pay equivalent to your notice period and an additional two months.
2. Accelerated 1 year vesting period.
3. Medical Insurance coverage for additional one year.
4. Dedicated placement and career support
The next few days will be about helping the members who are leaving Unacademy and I would like to request all functions and teams to support this transition.