Gaurav Munjal’s last gamble

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Editor's note: Shortly after Gaurav Munjal sent a memo to employees announcing a new round of layoffs at Unacademy on 7 November, co-founder and chief technology officer Hemesh Singh called a meeting of the tech team. The air inside the office was thick with anxiety and uncertainty. People were looking at each other with hope and guilt. Hope that it would be the others, not them, on the layoff list, and guilt for feeling that way. Singh needed to calm the nerves in his team if he wanted any work done. He told them that the layoffs will not impact the tech team. Tech, after all, is the backbone of the company. The job cuts, he said, would mostly impact the business team. Within 48 hours of that meeting with Singh, his team was informed that it would be downsized by about 25-30%, which meant about 50 people might lose their jobs.  “Panic set in. People didn’t know what to do. Who to trust and who not to,” says a person in the know, requesting anonymity. “The founders were saying something and …