Unacademy lays off around 600 employees due to non-performance, redundancy

Edtech company Unacademy has laid off around 600 employees on account of non-performance and role redundancy as the company looks to enhance efficiency and become profitable by the end of this year.

According to sources, the company has laid off around 600 employees or around 10 per cent of the company's total workforce. The retrenched employees include contractual workers and educators, one of the sources said.

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When contacted, an Unacademy spokesperson said that the company is built on a culture of high performance and transparency, and a key aspect of that is the transparency and objectivity with which it conducts the annual appraisal process.

"Based on the outcome of several assessments, a small subset of employees, contractor, and Educator roles were re-evaluated due to role redundancy and performance, as is common for any organization of our size and scale.

"The vast majority of roles impacted have been a result of that process, and the efficiency we aim to drive in the broader business. We have discussed and parted ways with the identified people, in accordance with their respective contracts," the spokesperson said.

In February, Ronnie Screwala-backed edtech firm Lido Learning reportedly shut down operations which impacted over 1,000 people working with it.

The Unacademy spokesperson said that the company is bullish about the core test-prep business and the growth of group companies Relevel, PrepLadder, and Graphy.

"Our test-prep business is growing over 50 per cent year-on-year (YoY) and our EBITDA percentage is also getting better. Relevel has witnessed unprecedented growth in the number of users and candidates placed. As an organization we are focussed on becoming profitable by the end of the fourth quarter of the calendar year 2022 in our core business while investing for growth in our group companies," the spokesperson said.

Unacademy claims to have over 1.8 million registered users on the hiring platform Relevel and delivered over USD 2 million worth of total offers to candidates who have passed the Relevel Test.