Understanding Startups with Mr. Gaurav Munjal — CEO Unacademy
Understanding Startups with Mr. Gaurav Munjal — CEO Unacademy
If you feel sad on a Sunday afternoon because the next day you have to go back to work, you would probably have known that jobs are unnatural for humans to have. If we go back a hundred years before the mechanization era, we would see that the default way of making a living was not through a job, but through farming.
To understand more about it, we interviewed Mr. Gaurav Munjal, CEO Unacademy and tried to understand his journey while creating two massively successful Tech startups at a young age.
When asked about the challenges that he faced during the initial days of Flat chat and Unacademy
The challenges that I faced during FlatChat were very different than the ones in Unacademy. It was the first time that I was scaling a team of 50 people and was more about channeling the energy and focus at right things. At Unacademy, I knew the mistakes that I made previously, so now it was about how not to repeat those mistakes. For example, in the last 1.5 years, all our achievements like growth and the 3 rounds of funding have been possible because of what FlatChat taught me.
His views on the technological advancement of the Education sector
Technology has been the key to all the advancements in this sector. You can pick a course from any educator and watch it online. Technology does two things, first is accessibility which makes sure that high-quality content and educators are available online. The second thing is personalisation, If you are learning something quickly, you can answer the questions way better. If you make the content or the teachings of best educators available to everyone online for free, you have done half of the work.
The problem they are trying to solve through Unacademy
The problem that we are trying to solve is to empower great educators to teach. We are trying to get great educators and courses online. It is more about the educators than learners in our platform. Like if you get a great physics educator on board then the people who want to learn physics will automatically come to the platform
His comment on the top priority for a Tech Company
I think it is the product, people, and process. It starts with the product then you need the smartest people working with you in the team and then the process. Also, what is important in today’s time is to try solving problems through groundbreaking tech rather than throwing money and people at it.
What is more difficult, customer acquisition or customer retention?
According to me, it is retention. In today’s world, if you do a nice campaign on Facebook, twitter or a celebrity endorses your product, you can get customers or in short, you can buy them. Retention is all that makes the difference.
His advice to budding Entrepreneurs
Don’t start-up for the wrong reasons. Don’t start-up if you want to become famous. Startup if you truly believe in the idea and want to make a difference and you are passionate about it. There is nothing you would do except your start-up. Think of it this way as if you have 5 years to live, would you still be doing that start-up.
SODIO’s Take
The approach followed by Team Unacademy where the courses are uploaded for free is very different than the other EduTech startups. Their plan on focussing quality educators is what will make the difference. We at SODIO, while consulting startups and first-time entrepreneurs with their Tech product try to boost in the same thinking and passion on them.
Unacademy is India’s largest learning platform. They believe in making high-quality educational videos available for free for everyone.
