How did a nondescript YouTube channel become a unicorn startup? The
journey started when Gaurav Munjal and Hemesh Singh quit their jobs at
CommonFloor and Roman Saini quit the Indian Administrative Service to
start a YouTube channel that helped students prepare for competitive
exams. Six years and 49 million users later, Unacademy has changed the
way Indians learn and also democratized access to high-quality
education. If COVID-19 was a trial by fire for every industry, edtech
was one of the sectors perfectly poised for a boom. Many online
education startups were in the fray but only a few survived. Unacademy
not only outsmarted the competition, but also surpassed every projection
and created a new yardstick of success, becoming a $3.5 billion valued
edtech startup. In Unstartup, bestselling startup author Nistha Tripathi
traces the gravity-defying ascent of Unacademy. Drawing on numerous
conversations with people in and around Unacademy including its
founders, board members, advisors, current and ex-employees, Nistha
takes the reader through a page-turning rhapsody of startup strategies
and lessons. These insider accounts and anecdotes reveal the day-to-day
thinking, decisions and discipline of a unique (un)startup. Reams have
been written about the glitz surrounding startups, but it is the daily
grind, small choices and critical pivots that no one tells you about.
Unstartup offers a ringside view of how Unacademy ignored conventional
advice and created its own playbook for success.
