Unacademy will hold only a 30% stake as an investor in CodeChef, which will now function as an independent business being run by its current team.
In a news release, Unacademy said it has infused capital in CodeChef to help it function for the next 12-18 months. The company did not immediately respond to ET’s request for comment on the specifics of the deal.
More than 2 million global users have participated in over 10,000 algorithmic contests held on the CodeChef platform, the news release said.
Prior to the acquisition, CodeChef was a non-profit educational arm of the Bhavin Turakhia-led Directi group and was founded in 2009.
The acquisition was expected to help the non-profit access “greater resources, teams, technology, platforms and capital”, according to a CodeChef announcement back then.
Discover the stories of your interest
Unacademy cofounder Gaurav Munjal was part of the CodeChef team in 2013 before he moved on to other projects. On the other hand, Turakhia has been a board member and shareholder at Unacademy since 2017.SoftBank and General Atlantic-backed Unacademy is under pressure to cut down on its monthly cash burn, even so with news of a business sale in the fray. Last month, the company had cancelled appraisals for the financial year ended March 2023 to focus on turning profitable, amid an overall tightening in funding and a demand slump for online education.
The edtech company had fired around 1,000 contractual and full-time employees, ET reported in April 2022.
In July 2022, Munjal had told staff that Unacademy would not lay off more employees and would work to reduce other expenses. But in early November, the Bengaluru-based firm culled as many as 350 roles, impacting about 10% of employees across the group.
Again, in January this year, its Relevel business unit laid off 40 employees, or 20% of its workforce, to focus from the education business to “tests product” and a new app called NextLevel.