Unacademy rolls out Rs 50 crore Esop buyback; employees to receive big payouts

Test preparation startup Unacademy has initiated the process of a Rs 50 crore employee stock ownership plan (Esop) buyback, founder Gaurav Munjal said on Friday.

“Grateful to the board for carving out a cash pool for the employees even though the valuation is significantly less than our last fundraise,” he said in a post on X.

According to Munjal, eight employees will earn more than Rs 1 crore each from the buyback, while 17 will receive more than Rs 50 lakh and another 38 employees will make more than Rs 10 lakh.


“Over the next few weeks, we will be reaching out to everyone to participate in this buyback,” he added.

The company had earlier said that the valuation used for exercising Esops was based on its latest assessment conducted by a merchant banker, which valued Unacademy at about Rs 2,650 crore (nearly $230 million). Exercising refers to conversion of stock options to actual shares.

In December 2025, Unacademy amended its Esop policy, significantly shortening the exercise window for former employees. Under the amended plan, former employees were required to exercise their vested stock options within 30 days of leaving the company.

It later reinstated the earlier policy, allowing former employees up to 10 years to purchase the stock options earned during their tenure. These changes, which faced pushback from former employees, were brought in place in the context of a potential deal with UpGrad.

However, Ronnie Screwvala’s higher-skilling company UpGrad withdrew from talks to acquire Unacademy over differences in valuation expectations. Initially, the talks for an all-stock transaction were based on a valuation of about $300 million for Unacademy, representing a more than 90% cut from its peak valuation.

Earlier, Munjal said that the company’s valuation might have dropped sharply, falling below $500 million from $3.5 billion in 2021 when it had raised $440 million in a funding round led by Singapore’s Temasek Holdings.