Why did I choose Unacademy?
Their recent transition into becoming the second EdTech Unicorn in India, the amazing folks in leadership, the wonderful Twitter marketing….(I do go on in the post)…
but what piqued my curiosity- there was a really great YouTube tutor I followed diligently while prepping for competitive exams.
Guess where he is now?
And if UA is good enough for him, well :)
What is Unacademy?
…you ask..
Unacademy is an online Indian EdTech company. Their take to EdTech is offering live classes online primarily for competitive exams for now. As of date, they are the largest live learning platform in India.
Unacademy’s Mission/Vision statement:
Tagline- India’s largest learning platform
“Let’s crack it”
Democratising education at all levels beginning with test prep
Build numerous courses in multiple languages for students
Empower India’s youth population
interesting so far, and…
Who are they up against?
The EdTech space is supremely crowded, here I have handpicked only a few companies:
YouTube: Unstructured content creation platform where the creator has to be self reliant for creating content and to establish a brand.
Amazon Academy: The most recent addition to this list- Amazon launched Amazon Academy on 13th January, 2021. They are currently only focussing on engineering competitive exams (JEE, BITSAT, etc). This is in line with Amazon’s vision of “becoming an everything store” (checkout a previous blog post). The timing of this launch is really something, given the recent Akash Institute acquisition.
Byjus: India’s first EdTech unicorn. Largest market share in India’s EdTech space. It surely has a greater student volume but then to be fair to UA, it caters to other domains (UA only focuses on 9th+ Grades and competitive exams)
💡 Fun Fact- Byju Raveendran cleared CAT 2 times with 100 percentile. The first time was “for fun” and the second time to check if the first time was “a fluke.”
Khan Academy: offers quality education for free; Khan Academy is run on donations and fundings from philanthropic organisations. The content created is distributed in the rural areas of the world.
and, in the words of Gaurav Munjal, CEO of Unacademy,
Our audacious goal, is to compete with Netflix.
which makes sense in a content-creation perspective. UA definitely is doing its bit to facilitate creation of great content, but more on that later.
so…
What’s so special about Unacademy?
High Agency
Gaurav Munjal believes great companies are built on obsession and paranoia.
In fact, his persistence at growing Unacademy into the unicorn today can be traced back to when he was just starting out.
He planned his family vacations around the city his potential investor was going to be in. He flew to Dubai, to meet Bhavin Turakhia (current board member at Unacademy) for 15 minutes after his squash game. He doesn’t even like Dubai.
💡 Fun Fact- Gaurav Munjal’s personal blog is titled “Mischief Managed”, Unacademy’s parent company is listed as “Sorting Hat” Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and his employees are all sorted into Hogwarts houses to compete for an annual House trophy.
A Unique Approach
Some things that set UA apart-
A Subscription Based Business Model
They offer a subscription based package for their educational categories, as opposed to the traditional way of offering individual course based subscription. In layman terms, imagine paying per TV show on Netflix vs subscribing monthly for their entire offering.
A Marketplace Approach ( a Network Effects Moat)
UA is built like a marketplace (think Amazon/Dunzo). Like in Dunzo’s case we had three stakeholders- the merchant, the delivery partner and the end consumer- the symbiotic relationship between all three made Dunzo work. Similarly UA has two stakeholders:
The Educators and the Students.
Ensuring success for UA means ensuring a top-notch experience for content creation and delivery for educators, as well as, a great learning experience for students.
Educators will come to a platform which has a large number of students in order to gain more traction, and similarly, students will chase the most popular and effective educators.
striking a balance is important
Unique Current Offerings
The Phoenix Accelerator Program: (focus on Educators)
A one-time 12 week training program where Educators are trained by top class mentors. Unacademy pays unbiased heed to its motto of democratising knowledge for everyone. Creating a structured learning program for those who impart education is a great step in revolutionising EdTech in India.
Graphy
Is a mobile-first content-consumption app created as a separate product from Unacademy. They aim to bring forward an experience to “spark your imagination”. Gaurav Munjal wants to change the traditional books into interactive e-learning videos, rolled out to users chapter wise.
source: YourStory
and finally-
Suggestions for Improvement
It is easy to come up with solutions from a student’s perspective. However, will give my brain cells some much needed exercise and will be focussing on the Educator experience-
Expectation: Educators want to upskill constantly and grow to keep up with the current trends. They wish to be top educators in their domain. How do we teach the teachers?
Current Offering: The Phoenix Accelerator Program, an Educator app
Priority Improvements: Introduce a platform dedicated solely to educators where the following functionalities can be provided-
A continuous learning platform to enable them to stay updated with new content in the industry and new/improved methods of teaching.
A structured leaderboard to motivate more contributions to the UA network with a reward system to ensure growth.
Networking within the platform between educators will allow an educator to explore other areas she might be interested in and also learn from her peers.
Educators can be offered technical training to enhance their content creating skills using UA specific technology. Additionally, transferable skills training (for better communication online) can be offered.
This will have a threefold advantage-
Re-emphasise UA’s mission of democratising knowledge for everyone, even the educators.
Re-emphasise educators’ belief that UA is invested in their growth, and hence contribute to increasing stickiness. (directly leads to higher motivation for good educators to stay on the platform).
Better content created and more views. More views will directly translate to more revenue for both the educator and the company, additionally, will lead to enhancement in the growth of the educator’s profile in the UA network.
Exploratory Improvements:
Tenure: The concept of tenures in esteemed universities serves both the university and professor- retention and job security. This can be explored with educators on Unacademy-
By offering tenure not only will more educators be inspired to stay but this will also re-emphasise the confidence that Unacademy is set out to disrupt EdTech.
Problem: However, academic tenure often leads to decreased performance and restriction in terms of freedom to the educator.
phew..!
To conclude
Unacademy’s growth since its launch 5 years back has been exceptional. The high agency founding team and the their wonderfully ambitious vision statement definitely have me excited. The innovative approach to tackling EdTech, has brought UA so far.
Personally, I love the Educator-Student marketplace approach and the focus on improving both experiences.
But the challenge is for the startup to turn profitable. Although they have shown considerable improvement (500% increase in revenue) for UA Plus, time will tell if they can “crack profitability” in the future.
Until then, excited to see what they have in store for us!
That’s All Folks! Please reach out to me for feedback and/or comments.
Disclaimer: Opinions are my own, images are open-sourced and I tried making the article as link intensive as I could to get my citations right.
Further Reading:
I really liked this Harry Potter themed article by A Junior VC, they summarise UA’s journey over the years brilliantly.
This is a great post explaining what is not a Network Effect with a few examples. UA’s NFx comes from the symbiotic relationship between the stakeholders involved. Reach out for a more intense discussion on this!
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This article has cast a very informative spell! I'm also very pleased to learn about all the references to my universe.
Really interesting read!
The interesting use of Harry Potter references is a very fun addition to employee experiences.