The move marks a significant pivot for Munjal and co-founder Roman Saini, who are stepping away from Unacademy to lead Airlearn full-time.
As part of the ongoing spin-off, Munjal is in discussions with existing investors Peak XV and Nexus Venture Partners for additional capital, the people added.
“As of now, the discussions are ongoing and there are many moving parts, but investors like General Atlantic and SoftBank are expected to retain mirror shareholding in the hived-off entity,” one of them said.
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Currently, Nexus Venture Partners is the largest shareholder in Unacademy with a 13.8% stake, followed by Sequoia Capital (13.7%) and SoftBank Vision Fund (11.6%), according to data from startup intelligence firm Tracxn.
Unacademy founders collectively hold 9.2%. The company’s ESOP pool accounts for 11.2%, with the remainder held by other investors.
The deal is set to close this quarter. Roughly 10% of Unacademy’s cash reserves, which stood at ₹1,200 crore as of May, will be transferred to Airlearn as part of the restructuring, the second person added.
In FY24, Unacademy’s total revenue stood at ₹988.4 crore, a 5.3% dip from ₹1,044 crore in FY23. However, it significantly cut its net loss to ₹631 crore from ₹1,678 crore the previous year. In a public note on X in April, Munjal said Unacademy had also slashed cash burn in its core business to under ₹200 crore, down from over ₹1,000 crore three years ago.
According to a person familiar with the matter, Munjal was initially unable to exit and pursue Airlearn full-time due to the high burn rate. The board asked him to reduce the cash burn before approving his departure.
Queries sent to Nexus, SoftBank, and General Atlantic remained unanswered at the time of publishing. Queries sent to Unacademy on shareholding and new funding also remained unanswered. Peak XV declined to comment on the development.
The restructuring underscores a shift in strategy for Munjal, who now aims to build Airlearn into a global, product-first company centered on AI-driven personalized learning.
Unacademy raised $880 million from investors including Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank, Temasek, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital and Peak XV. Its last funding round—a $440 million Series H in 2022—pegged the company’s valuation at $3.4 billion.
But as the pandemic-driven edtech boom waned and learners returned to classrooms, Unacademy expanded into offline coaching—a move that didn’t sit well with Munjal, a self-described tech-first entrepreneur.
In an interview with Mint, Munjal confirmed that a portion of Unacademy’s bank balance has been allocated to Airlearn but declined to comment on the deal specifics. “Today, we strongly believe that education, and especially personalized tutoring, will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of AI,” Munjal said. “Language learning is just a category to begin with, but we’ve kept the name Airlearn because we want to be more broad.”
From coaching to conversation AI
Beyond the corporate restructuring, Airlearn is charting its own course in the language learning market. Formerly branded as Unacademy Languages, Airlearn launched in April last year with five languages and now offers 14, with plans to add 20 more within two months.
The goal is that an AI tutor will eventually teach you anything you want to learn in a personalised manner, it will know what your weaknesses are.
Like Unacademy, the language learning app functions on a freemium model: some features are free to use but more advanced ones are locked behind a paywall. A premium subscription currently costs $40 a year for users abroad. In India, an annual premium subscription will set users back ₹480.
“We went from $500,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR) to $2.5 million in four months. If I can double this by the end of the year, and get to 5 million ARR, that should be good,” said Munjal. The company recently crossed 80,000 daily active users.
Munjal envisioned Airlearn as a global product from the outset. The US accounts for 40% of Airlearn’s revenue, while the UK and Germany together make up 15%. The remaining 45% comes from other markets.
The global online language learning market is projected to grow from $21.06 billion in 2025 to $44.38 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 16.08%, according to market research firm Mordor Intelligence.
Meanwhile, at Unacademy, Sumit Jain will now lead the overall business, with a focus on scaling its offline offerings, while senior leaders manage online operations.
Leaner, smarter, smaller
Munjal’s approach with Airlearn marks a deliberate departure from the scale-at-all-costs strategy that defined Unacademy’s earlier years. The company has laid off at least 2,000 employees since 2022, including 250 last year alone.
“My experience of hiring too many people with Unacademy was not a good one,” said Munjal. “The entire world knows about how we had to lay off a lot of people. Why make the same mistakes again?”
Airlearn currently operates with just 30-40 full-time staff. More than growth through sales, Munjal is betting on a product-led strategy.
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“A true tech company is defined by who owns the revenue,” he said. “If it’s sales who owns the revenue then it’s a tech-enabled company. If it’s the product people who own revenue then it’s a true tech company.”
The broader play
While the immediate focus remains on languages, Munjal is positioning Airlearn as a broader AI-powered learning platform.
With 20 more languages slated for release in the next two months, Airlearn is aiming for 50 by year-end—and chess, too. “Eventually, we want to get into the K12 segment on the app and have an AI tutor for them,” Munjal said.
The plan is to build a personalized, voice-enabled AI bot that can speak with users and guide them through lessons, tweaking and adapting those lessons on the fly to better suit a learner on Airlearn.
“The goal is that an AI tutor will eventually teach you anything you want to learn in a personalised manner, it will know what your weaknesses are,” he said.
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He believes most existing AI learning apps are either locked behind paywalls or over-gamified—a gap Airlearn’s tutor aims to fill by combining accessibility with deep personalization. To offset compute costs, Airlearn plans a $150 premium subscription granting access to the AI tutor, though no release date has been announced yet.
Source:https://www.livemint.com/companies/start-ups/unacademy-airlearn-gaurav-munjal-ai-language-learning-app-edtech-india-language-learning-app-india-ai-tutoring-learning-11749026359815.html