Karan Shroff, chief marketing officer of edtech unicorn Unacademy, who was promoted as its partner in September last year, quit the company on Thursday. In a Twitter post, Shroff announced his departure, three years after joining Unacademy as VP of marketing.
“Over 3 years of memories, tonnes of awards, a great team that taught me a lot and a journey that I will always cherish. I would like to thank everyone that me helped in this journey and I’m extremely grateful. On that note I will be moving on from Unacademy and onto the next,” Shroff said in his post.
Prior to joining Unacademy, Shroff had worked with smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi’s India unit as its head of branding from 2015-2019. He joined Unacademy in September 2019 and was promoted to the CMO position in September 2020.
Shroff’s exit comes at a time when the edtech startup has been working on launching a new vertical titled ‘UnacademyONE’, which is set to be unveiled on September 5.
The SoftBank-backed edtech startup has been in a cost-saving mode in the past few months after funding dried up across growth and late-stage rounds, especially after investors turned cautious due to a meltdown in tech stocks in India and in foreign markets. Consumer Internet segments, including edtech, are expected to face a prolonged funding winter in the coming months.
Unacademy had also initiated two rounds of layoffs, which affected at least 750 employees, including 150 employees in June 2022 and another 600 workers in April 2022. Unacademy, however, denies that it conducted any layoffs, claiming that the cutbacks were part of a “performance improvement” programme.
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In the recent past, multiple edtech peers like Vedantu, Invact Metaversity, FrontRow have sacked several employees to reduce their cash burn while Lido Learning and Udayy each fired all their 100-plus staff and shut shop because their purely online teaching models didn’t yield desired results.
Edtech companies currently operate in a hyper-competitive market and have seen their growth rate drop in recent times. The reopening of schools and colleges, and a slowdown in funding from venture capital (VC) firms have both weighed on the industry’s performance.
Underscoring the slowdown, Unacademy’s co-founder and chief executive officer Gaurav Munjal had earlier written in an email to his employees, “We are looking at a time where funding will dry up for at least 12-18 months. Some people are predicting that this might last 24 months.”
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