Unacademy’s test prep CEO Sumit Jain quits ahead of upGrad acquisition

Sumit Jain, who had been elevated as cofounder and CEO of Unacademy's test-prep business last year, has stepped down from his role ahead of the company's planned merger with Ronnie Screwvala's upGrad Education.

Jain, who had joined Unacademy in 2020 after the SoftBank-backed edtech bought Graphy, will continue as an advisor, the company's co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal told employees in an internal note. ET has reviewed the note. Jain’s last day will be June 30.



The test-prep chief’s departure comes amid both companies filing for a merger with the country's antitrust regulator, the Competition Commission of India. ET had previously exclusively reported that upGrad was buying Unacademy for around Rs 2,055 crore, less than a tenth of its previous private market value.

Jain’s role had become even more central last September, when Munjal stepped down from day-to-day activities. While Munjal was focusing on his new venture, language learning platform Airlearn, Jain was tasked with running the core test-prep business. According to people in the know, Munjal will be back at the helm once Jain moves on.

"Sumit built two strong pillars for Unacademy. First is Graphy, which is a growing, profitable business for us. His acquisition of Spayee and then merging the same with Graphy and then scaling it was really needle-moving for Unacademy Group," Munjal said in the note. "And then he helped make our Offline Business Profitable with a focus on Unit Economics and eventually converting them to franchisees."

Jain, a 2006 IIT Roorkee graduate, is a serial entrepreneur who founded two companies before Graphy: real estate portal CommonFloor and videochatting platform Opentalk. Both were later acquired, with CommonFloor bought by Quikr and Opentalk acquired by Kuku FM. Under Jain, Commonfloor had also acquired Munjal’s first company, Flatchat, a real estate platform for college students and bachelors.

Next, Jain founded Graphy, a platform that enabled creators to monetise live cohort-based courses. Unacademy acquired Graphy during its aggressive dealmaking phase in 2020-21, when the edtech sector was flush with investor capital and online learning was seen as lasting beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. During that period, Unacademy acquired more than a dozen companies as it looked to expand quickly across categories.