Unacademy hives off coding platform Codechef

Codechef, competitive programming platforms for students and professional programmers, announced that it has been hived off from Unacademy Group and will now function as an independent business being run by its current team.

Unacademy will hold a 30% stake in the new hived -off company as an investor and has also infused an initial capital that will help it function for the next 12-18 months, the company said in a statement. To improve the company’s financials, CodeChef will cut back on its costs and has paused some of its offerings such as Cook-Offs, Lunchtimes, and Long contests for the time being.

Unacademy took over CodeChef in June 2020, a platform that assists programmers in learning computer programming. Since 2009, over 2 million users across the globe have participated in over 10,000 algorithmic contests held on the platform. CodeChef is also popular among college students in India as a DSA-focused practice platform. 

To recall, Codechef was not for a profit venture under its previous owner – Directi. Bhavin Turakhia, founder of the company, has been a member of the board of directors of Unacademy since 2017.

Unacademy was on acquisition spree during 2020-2022 period. However, the company had to lay off several employees from the core team and its portfolio companies during the funding winter. The company also shut down its K-12 learning platform Mastree. Unacademy Group also comprise Graphy and PrepLadder.

The company claims that it has a network of over 91,000 registered educators and over 99 million learners.