Unacademy follows global trend, allows permanent work from home for 60% employees

Online test preparation platform Unacademy, owned by Sorting Hat Technologies, will allow 60% of its workforce to continue to work remotely after the Covid-19 lockdown is lifted as well, the company tweeted. 

We are bringing some major changes to the way we work.

Even post the lockdown, 60% of our entire workforce will be working from home permanently.

— Unacademy (@unacademy) May 13, 2020

“We did a bunch of experiments in the past two months. The company has around 600 employees in sales and operations. Apart from a few core teams like product and content, where we need a lot of interactions and meetings on a daily basis, everything can be moved remotely. The sales and operations people can come in when leaders call for meetings,” co-founder Gaurav Munjal told The Economic Times.

The company already has more than 1,000 educators working from home, the financial daily quoted him as saying.

The Bengaluru headquartered company made the announcement a few hours after San Francisco-based social networking platform Twitter said some of its employees could work from home permanently.

Earlier this month, Mountain View, California headquartered search engine giant Google and Menlo Park, California-based social media company Facebook also extended remote working facilities for their employees till the end of the year, according to multiple media reports.

Read: Coronavirus India LIVE Updates

Additionally, Sequoia-backed Unacademy has on-boarded Kota-based coaching institute Nucleus Education as its online partner, according to a separate statement. The collaboration will provide access to strategy, tips and tricks, practice questions and time management techniques for joint entrance examinations (JEE) aspirants on the platform, it said.

Unacademy, established in 2015 by Munjal, Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh and Sachin Gupta, began as an educational YouTube channel providing free video content for various entrance examinations on its platform. Subsequently, it developed two proprietary apps -- one for learning, called Unacademy Learning App, and another for teaching, called Unacademy Educator App. 

Read: Steadview-backed Unacademy widens FY19 losses to Rs 90 crore

Last week, it increased its pool of employee stock options (ESOP) from 41,026 to 53,044.

In February, the edtech platform raised $110 million in a growth funding round from General Atlantic and Facebook. Prior to that, it bagged $50 million (Rs 346 crore then) in a growth funding round from Steadview Capital, Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures.