To say that Unacademy is fighting its original instincts to survive the competition wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

As an online tutoring business, it was meant to disrupt brick-and-mortar classroom teaching by bringing students on its platform. “[Unacademy cofounder Gaurav] Munjal always wanted to build a great product company; he hated the offline business,” said the co-founder of a rival edtech platform.

But now, it’s going against the grain. On 7 April, the company announced a flat discount of 40% on all offline courses for a week at a star-studded event called Unacademy Aarambh 2024 in Bengaluru.

“Besides that, you will get a spot and centre discountAdditional discounts that can be given at the spot for customers confirming the sale immediately or centre-level discounts which is the maximum permissible discount allowed at centre/franchise level of nearly 10%,” said a senior academic counsellor at Unacademy’s offline centre in western India. “There are discounts for less income or single parents and further discounts for students who get good marks in UNSATUnacademy National Scholarship Admission Test is an annual test for IIT JEE aspirants from Class IX to XII. Depending on their ranks in the test, students can get discounts on fees, even upto 90%. There are other rewards like laptops and mobile phones, too..”

They and 13 others The Ken spoke with—including former and current teachers, business managers, competitors, edtech investors, experts, founders and executives of companies acquired by Unacademy and competitors—did not want to be named because they feared repercussions from the company or didn’t want to comment publicly.

Once India’s second largest player by valuation in the space after edtech unicorn Byju’s, Unacademy’s “online business degrew by 30%” in 2023, said Munjal in a Linkedin post.LinkedIn Several company insiders told The Ken that the segment is just half of what it used to be.

In February, Munjal said YourstoryEdtech is a very deep category and I am still bullish: Unacademy’s Gaurav Munjal that roughly half of the Softbank-backed company’s consolidated revenues now come from its offline coaching centres.