Culture a priority for Unacademy now: Gaurav Munjal

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Editor's note: Unacademy co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal and I have been chatting about his business and edtech in general. In the first part of this interview, Munjal talked about his journey and the evolution of Unacademy from a YouTube channel to a multi-billion dollar enterprise. The bets that worked and those that failed.  The second part of our hours-long conversation at the Unacademy office in Bengaluru revolved around a thornier topic.  Stories about Unacademy’s not so great culture are aplenty and have been doing the rounds for a few years now. From how Munjal speaks to how he behaves in meetings; his, often tumultuous, relationship with investors and employees; how he runs the company like a dictator and promotes a high-pressure, high-performance culture, which has often pushed people to the brink, there are many anecdotes. But they have always been overshadowed by Unacademy’s pace of growth.  Of late, though, Munjal has found himself in the eye of the storm regarding a lot of those issues. In particular, a controversial article in Moneycontrol about three weeks ago described the startup as having …