UNSTARTUP: How Unacademy Ignored Conventional Advice to Become a 3x Unicorn

Category Business & Economics
Format Paperback
Imprint Rupa
Price 395

ISBN: 978-93-5520-158-4
Pages: 280 pages
Date: 5th June 2022

ABOUT THIS BOOK

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.

AUTHOR OF THE BOOK

Nistha Tripathi is on a mission to make business books interesting to read. A bestselling start-up author, her last book No Shortcuts featured stories of 15 successful Indian entrepreneurs because she was tired of turning to Silicon Valley books for advice on building start-ups in India. After completing a degree in Engineering from University of Illinois, she joined New York University to pursue an MBA but dropped out. Thereafter, she worked on Wall Street and with a few fastgrowing start-ups in Manhattan, where she developed a keen understanding of business strategy. She organized NYU Stern’s first Entrepreneurship Summit that featured the likes of Seth Godin and Chris Dixon. After returning to India, Nistha founded India’s leading career consulting community—Scholar Strategy. It has helped hundreds of applicants get into top MS and MBA programmes in the US including MIT, Harvard and Stanford. She is an active career coach (certified with NeuroLeadership Institute, USA), acclaimed author and a prolific speaker. She has given talks at leading start-up events and college start-up fests. With 100,000 plus followers and more than 12 million views on her content across Quora, LinkedIn and Instagram, Nistha actively writes on entrepreneurship, career advice and pursuing one’s passion. Her articles have appeared on Entrepreneur, Time, DailyO, DNA, The Tribune and other leading media outlets.