Gaurav Munjal is the co-founder and CEO of Unacademy, one of India’s most aggressive and highest-valued ed-tech startups, last valued at close to $3.5 billion.

But this story started a long time back.

When Gaurav was just in class nine, and got into the content game. In a few years, he had started getting monthly payments from Google for the ads he ran on his content.

In college, he had a blog devoted to the actress Priyanka Chopra. That fetched him hundreds of thousands of rupees each month. On a Facebook page that he ran—this one devoted to fashion—Chinese brands paid him hundreds of dollars each month to run their ads.

So when he finally started Unacademy in 2015, it was, in many ways, a logical evolution of his life thus far. Nearly eight years, and $835 million in venture capital later, Unacademy is a company that reflects much of Gaurav’s personality.

It has no time for niceties. It would rather disrupt than defend itself. It is supremely confident in the face of even existential crises. And it attaches zero value to classical or theoretical notions of education.

I mean, who else would say that education is really a tournament that can change lives and that teachers are coaches and that the best coaches are like mercenaries, and that they already earn more than second-rung movie stars?

This is Episode 19 of First Principles.

Full Episode Transcript:

03:45 – Unacademy is not in the education business

Rohin Dharmakumar

Gaurav you’ve said “Unacademy is not in the education business. It’s in the motivation business.” You said this in the past. Who is Unacademy trying to motivate?  Is it Students, Teachers, or other Ed-Techs?  Help us understand this. 

Gaurav Munjal 

So the statement comes from the philosophy that if people wanted best content and best education that is already available on YouTube…

The reason Unacademy started as a free platform is because the founders of unacademy were teaching on YouTube, so we got distribution.

And at some point we are like “We want to build our own YouTube for education.”

And education, like entertainment, will be very celebrity driven.

So when you have Zomato, Swiggy or other platforms, there you have commoditised labour working for an API whereas when it comes to content platforms including education, if there is a good teacher the Pareto principle will be applied and everybody would want to study from that teacher.

And if you go to that teacher’s class, it is not the content because the content is already available. It is the fact that these teachers, these educators make you want to study.

Some of these teachers are from Kota, some of these teachers are from Delhi and they inspire the learners.