Edtech unicorn Unacademy has reduced its cash burn in the core business to under Rs 200 crore, down from over Rs 1,000 crore three years ago, according to CEO Gaurav Munjal’s post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter). This represents roughly half of what the company spent last year — marking an improvement in financial discipline — and is in line with what Munjal told FE in January.
Munjal, in a series of tweets following Unacademy’s townhall meeting on Monday, revealed that the company currently has Rs 1,200 crore in the bank and is in what he described as a “default alive state.” Two years ago, the company had a cash balance of Rs 2,100 crore.
The SoftBank-backed edtech firm has been working toward profitability for some time. It cut losses by 62% to Rs 631 crore in FY24, while its revenue remained flat during the period. In an interview with FE in January this year, Munjal had stated that the company had reduced its annual burn from Rs 1,400 crore two years ago to Rs 300 crore in 2024, with plans to bring it below Rs 100 crore in 2025 and achieve group-level profitability by 2026.
Munjal’s latest tweets also highlighted that several of Unacademy’s acquired businesses, including Graphy and PrepLadder, are now generating cash on a monthly basis. This aligns with his January statement to FE where he described these two acquisitions as “highly successful and profitable,” in contrast to the company’s K-12 acquisitions, Mastree and SwiftLearn, which were shut down two years ago due to market shifts.
On the offline front, Munjal stated that “almost 70% of our offline centres will be profitable at a centre level this year,” adding that these centers are producing outcomes in competitive exam categories including JEE, NEET, and UPSC. Munjal had earlier mentioned that offline centers require a 60-70% occupancy rate to become profitable within an academic year, saying that their new centres were “consistently achieving that target.” He had also shared that offline contributed 40% of Unacademy’s revenue by 2024.
Munjal identified Airlearn, a language learning app developed primarily for the US market, as the fastest growing Unacademy Group tech product with approximately 70,000 daily active users and $2 million in annual recurring revenue over the past 12 months. He had said that Airlearn was nearing a $500,000 annual revenue run rate in the US, and the company was focusing on scaling that 10x while ensuring profitability for core business.
In his tweets, Munjal acknowledged that edtech companies pursuing growth through multiple acquisitions are “bound to fail” in the current market, noting that Unacademy had done this mistake in the past. He outlined three simple goals for the company: making the core business profitable as soon as possible, building tech products like Airlearn and Graphy, and not getting distracted by what others are doing.
Unacademy does not need to raise further funds and has no plans for new verticals or acquisitions. The firm plans to achieve profitability first, followed by an IPO, although there’s no fixed timeline for the IPO yet, Munjal had said in January.