Unacademy’s FY23 revenue rises to ₹907 cr, loss shrinks

Test preparation startup Unacademy said its losses narrowed to ₹1,678 crore in FY23 as compared to ₹1,678.15 crore for FY22, while revenue rose 26 per cent during the year to ₹907 crore from ₹719 crore in FY22, as per regulatory filings sourced by PrivateCircle.

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Employee-related expenses fell 28 per cent to ₹1,281 crore in FY23. This comes at a time when the company conducted massive cost-cutting efforts to extend its runway. The edtech unicorn has laid off over 2,000 employees since the beginning of 2022 in an attempt to reduce its expenses amid an ongoing funding crunch.

The edtech unicorn’s total expenses declined to ₹2,734.22 crore in FY22 from ₹3,703 crore a year earlier. The company’s employee benefit expenses accounted for 47 per cent of the company’s total expenses.

Unacademy has joined a growing list of startups to report reducing losses on the back of investors lowering exposure to high-growth loss-making startups. Other edtech unicorns like upGrad and Eruditus recorded a fall in their losses too.

Founded as a YouTube channel first in 2016 by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh and Sachin Gupta, Unacademy recently claimed to have reserves of ₹1,800 crore in the bank.

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The reserves let the company command over four years of cash runway, Munjal told employees in an internal memo last month. The runway will further extend to eight years because the startup continues to lower its cash burn, which is currently down 60 per cent, he had said, without giving any specifics. He added that Unacademy’s offline-centres business also grew from 6,000 learners in 2022 to 32,000 learners in 2023.

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