UNSTARTUP: How Unacademy Ignored Conventional Advice to Become a 3x Unicorn

How did a nondescript YouTube channel become a unicorn startup? The journey started when Gaurav Munjal and Hemesh Singh quit their jobs at CommonFloor and Roman Saini quit the Indian Administrative Service to start a YouTube channel that helped students prepare for competitive exams. Six years and 49 million users later, Unacademy has changed the way Indians learn and also democratized access to high-quality education. If COVID-19 was a trial by fire for every industry, edtech was one of the sectors perfectly poised for a boom. Many online education startups were in the fray but only a few survived. Unacademy not only outsmarted the competition, but also surpassed every projection and created a new yardstick of success, becoming a $3.5 billion valued edtech startup. In Unstartup, bestselling startup author Nistha Tripathi traces the gravity-defying ascent of Unacademy. Drawing on numerous conversations with people in and around Unacademy including its founders, board members, advisors, current and ex-employees, Nistha takes the reader through a page-turning rhapsody of startup strategies and lessons. These insider accounts and anecdotes reveal the day-to-day thinking, decisions and discipline of a unique (un)startup. Reams have been written about the glitz surrounding startups, but it is the daily grind, small choices and critical pivots that no one tells you about. Unstartup offers a ringside view of how Unacademy ignored conventional advice and created its own playbook for success.