According to Munjal, “partner at Unacademy is like a cofounder who joined at a later stage”.
“I have some news to share. Sumit Jain, who has been with us for more than 3.5 years now is now our new partner. Sumit has been like a cofounder to us since day one and has scaled Graphy to what it is today,” said Munjal in a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
Unacademy was founded in 2015 by Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh.
Jain joined Unacademy in April 2020 and cofounded the firm’s Graphy division which allows educators and creators to launch their own online courses.
Previously, in 2007, Jain cofounded and was the chief executive of CommonFloor, a real estate portal which allowed individuals to buy, sell and rent properties.
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CommonFloor was sold to classifieds platform Quikr in 2016. Notably, CommonFloor had also acquired Munjal’s previous entrepreneurial venture Flat.to in 2015. Flat.to helped students and bachelors find accommodation in a new city.
“Gaurav, thanks a lot for the trust you have shown in me. The journey with Unacademy Group has been a roller coaster ride, full of challenges and learning. And I would not demand anything less. Very very excited to be a part of the Unacademy Group,” said Jain in response to Munjal’s post.
At present, Graphy claims to have helped over 100,000 educators and creators launch their online courses.
In November last year, Munjal told employees in an internal memo that Graphy was clocking a monthly gross merchandise value (GMV) of almost Rs 25 crore.
Earlier in June, this year, Graphy had announced the acquisition of community-building platform Scenes for an undisclosed amount. Scenes enabled creators to manage, moderate, and monetise their community by selling digital products, hosting events, collecting payments, and more.
The rationale behind the acquisition was to enhance Graphy’s offerings and expand its reach in the creator ecosystem.
Prior to that, Graphy had acquired edtech platform Spayee for $25 million in October 2021. Spayee allowed content creators to produce audio and video tutorials, PDF documents, quizzes, assignments, and live classes.
The last two years have been a testing period for Indian edtech majors, as the ecosystem battles slowing growth, tapering of pandemic-led tailwinds and an ongoing funding winter with global macroeconomic headwinds.
In turn, players like Unacademy, Byju’s and Vedantu have undertaken layoffs across multiple tranches to increase their cash runway and reduce costs.
Earlier this year, Munjal had said that Unacademy had reduced its monthly cashburn to Rs 1.9 crore, and clocked revenues worth Rs 130 crore in May.
It was also looking to turn cash flow positive in June, with unit economics improving.