Exclusive: Unacademy shuts down Mastree after one year of acquisition

Edtech unicorn Unacademy has shut down Mastree a year after acquiring the K12 learning platform, according to an internal note sent by its co-founder and chief executive Gaurav Munjal to the company’s leadership team.

The development comes within a month of an Entrackr’s report which said that Unacademy may shut down Mastree soon.

“Everyone - after a lot of experiments we have decided to shut down the operations at Mastree. Kudos to Shrey and Royal for iterating at breakneck speed and trying out many things before all of us decided to shut things down,” reads the note.

Entrackr has seen the copy of the note which also added that Mastree’s co-founders Shrey Goshal and Royal Jain will be moving on from the Group by the end of the month. 

According to Entrackr sources, about 80% of the Mastree workforce are getting absorbed within the group and transitioned across several business units. At present, it has 240 people, out of which 190 are likely to be absorbed by Unacademy.

Unacademy declined to comment on the story.

Two-year-old Mastree used to provide subscription products for STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) courses for classes 5 to 8. Post its acquisition by Unacademy in July last year, Mastree had gone through a major pivot. 

Unacademy had invested $5 million in Mastree for a majority stake.

Around August, it started building English and public speaking courses for the K-12 segment. However, the company didn't scale it. Early this year, Mastree also laid off several hundred employees from its sales department. Last month, Unacademy also transitioned 70 Mastree employees to its core business. 

Unacademy, which recently closed its $440 million round at a $3.44 billion valuation, has acquired one dozen startups since its inception. Rheo Tv is the latest addition to its acquisition list.

Update: Adda 24X7 was in the advanced stage talks for a potential acquisition by Unacademy. The deal hasn't closed yet. We regret the error.