Edtech

Breaking free: The rise of independent educators in the post-Unacademy era

Nikhil Patwardhan

July 23, 2024 | 11 Min Read

Unacademy once thrived by hiring star teachers to attract students to its platform. However, with the company downsizing its teaching staff to cut costs post-Covid, many of these educators are emerging as competitors to the struggling edtech unicorn.

Key Takeaways

Unacademy, once known for its roster of star teachers, ditched many such teachers to cut costs amidst a wider edtech slowdown
Many of these star teachers have now started their own edtech platforms and are using platforms like YouTube and Instagram to attract students
While individually their businesses might be small, collectively, they represent a major threat to the expensively assembled empires that Indian edtechs have built
Success for these star teachers, though, is far from guaranteed, with them having to overcome various operational challenges as they compete not just with edtechs but each other

When Akanksha (name changed), a renowned teacher in UPSC circles, closed her laptop at 11PM on July 30, 2023, she breathed a sigh of relief. She had just delivered her final lecture for edtech unicorn Unacademy.

The previous three months, she recounted, involved working 16-18 hours a day. Her salary was also relatively meagre, especially given how teachers on platforms such as Unacademy often earned crores of rupees during the boom days of the pandemic while working significantly fewer hours.

“I am passionate about teaching, but this job just drained it. More than teaching, my performance incentive was sales. A large part of my salary was linked to the sales I made. After teaching successfully for years, I started questioning my abilities, and it came to a point where I told myself, ‘I don’t deserve this’, and decided to quit very abruptly,” she said.

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