Unacademy’s co-founder and CTO Hemesh Singh quits; moves to advisory role

Hemesh Singh, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Unacademy, has decided to quit after serving almost a decade at the Bengaluru-based edtech firm. He will now transition into an advisory role.

Announcing the development on social media platform X, Singh said, “It has been a wonderful ride and I am extremely grateful to have been a part of this journey. We did change the Test Prep Industry for good.”

Unacademy's co-founding team includes Singh, Gaurav Munjal and Roman Saini.

In August last year, the company elevated Sumit Jain to co-founder. Jain currently leads the Graphy division of Unacademy.

This is the third high profile exit for Unacademy in the past 12 months. In August 2023, the firm’s chief operating officer Vivek Sinha resigned while its chief financial officer (CFO) Subramanian Ramachandran quit the firm in November. Later, Sinha launched his new startup called Beyond Odds Technologies and raised $11 million led by Matrix Partners India and Lightspeed in April this year.

In January, Unacademy appointed Pratik Dalal as the chief financial officer (CFO) of its offline centers business.

Unacademy raised its last equity round worth $440 million led by Temasek at a valuation of $3.44 billion in August 2021. Since then, the firm has gone through several changes such as mass layoffs, shutting down acquired verticals and launching several offline centers. The firm recently forayed into the language learning segment with a new app.

In December 2023, Munjal said that the company has Rs 1,800 crore in their bank and has a runway of four years. He also added that the runway will increase to eight years by next year as the company will further reduce its burn.

Munjal’s claims can be validated through financials of the company in FY23. During the fiscal year, Unacademy saw a 26% jump in its operating revenue to Rs 907 crore while controlling losses by nearly 40% to Rs 1,004 core. In the beginning of FY24, the company also claimed that it was close to profitability at the group level. The firm is yet to file its audited financial statements for FY24.