Unacademy’s marketing spend is treated as the villain of its story. It is not. The IPL sponsorship and the celebrity ads did exactly what advertising is meant to do. They made Unacademy famous. The problem sat one level down. Unacademy spent about Rs 548.7 crore on advertising in FY22 alone, more than three quarters of its revenue, to sell a premium exam-prep product that only a sliver of its users would ever pay for. Fame was never the thing it was short of. Conversion was. And no amount of cricket fixes a funnel.
This is a Crushed story with a twist. The usual take is “they wasted money on the IPL.” That take is lazy. The ads were good. The maths underneath them was brutal.
Let me show you the wiring.
Unacademy’s advertising spend: the cut that fixed the P&L
Advertising and promotional expense, Rs crore
Unacademy cut advertising 33% in FY23; revenue still grew 26% and net loss fell 41%. Source: Inc42 (consolidated financials, Sorting Hat Technologies).
How much did Unacademy actually spend on the IPL?
Less than the myth. In 2020, Unacademy signed on as an official IPL central sponsor for three seasons. The reported deal was around Rs 120 to 130 crore total, spread across 2020, 2021 and 2022. On top of the rights fee, it planned to spend roughly Rs 30 to 35 crore more on brand activations in the first season.
So the IPL line item was real, but it was not the whole burn. The IPL was the trophy. The advertising machine around it was the actual spend.
Look at the full number. In FY22, Unacademy’s consolidated advertising and promotional expense was Rs 548.7 crore. Its operating revenue that year was Rs 719.2 crore. Read that again. The company spent about 76 paise on advertising for every rupee it earned.
That is not a sponsorship. That is a business trying to buy a market.
Cricket made Unacademy famous. Famous was the one problem it never had.
Did the advertising work?
Yes. That is the uncomfortable part. Cricket is the closest thing India has to a shared religion, and the IPL is its biggest festival. Putting the Unacademy logo and the “Let’s Crack It” line in front of that audience did what it was supposed to. Awareness went up. The brand became a household name in a category full of forgettable coaching apps.
If the goal was to make people know Unacademy, the campaign was a success. Brand recall is one of the few things this spend clearly bought.
Which is exactly why the collapse is so instructive. Unacademy did not fail because nobody had heard of it. It failed while being one of the best-known edtech brands in the country. The awareness was there. The economics were not.
So why did Unacademy’s marketing spend become a problem?
Because the product it was advertising was not a mass-market product. Cricket reaches everyone. Unacademy’s paid plans were premium exam-prep subscriptions, aimed at serious aspirants preparing for competitive exams. That is a narrow, high-intent slice of the audience, not the whole stadium.
The numbers show the gap. Unacademy crossed roughly 800,000 active paid subscribers around April 2022. That sounds large until you set it against the tens of millions of people who used the free platform. The share of users who actually paid was tiny, in the low single digits by most estimates.
The price point makes the mismatch sharper. Unacademy’s serious money came from premium subscriptions and live coaching for competitive exams. Those are considered purchases, made by committed aspirants, not impulse buys prompted by a cricket ad. A freemium model sends millions of people through the door for free. The revenue depends on the few who commit to an expensive plan. Mass advertising fills the free tier. It does very little for the paid one.
Here is the trap. You can advertise to 300 million cricket viewers. You cannot convert them, because most of them were never going to buy a premium coaching subscription. So the marketing spend chased reach, while the revenue depended on a small, specific set of paying students. The top of the funnel got wider and wider. The bottom stayed narrow.
That is a very expensive way to grow. Every rupee of awareness has to be paid for. Only a fraction of the people it reaches ever return the money. It is the trap we keep seeing in Indian startups, where visibility gets confused with a business.
What did the burn actually cost Unacademy?
A lot, and fast. In FY22, Unacademy posted a consolidated net loss of about Rs 2,847.9 crore. Advertising was Rs 548.7 crore of the spend, and employee costs were even bigger at around Rs 1,771.6 crore. The company was burning on every front at once, funded by cheap pandemic-era capital.
Then the capital got expensive, and the story changed. Students went back to physical classrooms. Growth slowed. The bill for all that reach came due. If this pattern feels familiar, it should. It is the same edtech burn that showed up inside the Byju’s marketing machine, just at a smaller scale.
The valuation tells the ending. Unacademy peaked at a $3.44 billion valuation in August 2021, backed by Temasek, SoftBank, Tiger Global and others. By late 2025, founder Gaurav Munjal himself said the company was worth less than $500 million. A takeover discussion with upGrad valued it at a few hundred million and then fell apart. That is close to a 90% drop from the peak.
What proves the advertising was the burn, not the asset?
The recovery does. When Unacademy finally cut the marketing, the P&L started to heal.
In FY23, Unacademy slashed advertising and promotional spend by about 33%, to Rs 370.2 crore from Rs 548.7 crore. Revenue still grew 26% to Rs 907 crore. And the net loss fell 41%, to Rs 1,678.1 crore.
Sit with that. The company got healthier by spending less on being seen. If the visibility had been a durable asset, cutting it would have hurt. It did not. The brand stayed famous, and the finances improved. That is the tell. The awareness was already banked. The spend was buying repetition, not growth.
The cost of that lesson was paid by people, not just spreadsheets. Unacademy cut around 1,000 roles in April 2022, roughly 350 more that November, and about another 350 in March 2023, with founders taking salary cuts of up to 25%. In a June 2022 note, Munjal told staff the company was in a “bad state” and “not efficient” with money. The perks went. The business-class travel went. The jobs went.
What is the real lesson from Unacademy’s IPL bet?
Advertising can buy attention. It cannot buy a business model. Unacademy proved you can become one of India’s most recognised edtech brands and still lose thousands of crores, because recognition and revenue are two different machines.
The IPL deal was not the mistake. Treating fame as if it were the same as demand was the mistake. When your product only makes sense for a narrow, high-intent buyer, spending like a mass-market brand is a subsidy for people who were never going to pay you. It is the same gap we picked apart in CRED’s marketing spend: a brilliant, expensive ad that everyone remembers, sitting on top of numbers that take years to justify.
The founders who study this should copy the discipline of the recovery, not the swagger of the peak. Match the reach of your spend to the size of your real market. Watch conversion, not just awareness. Believe the funnel, not the applause.
THE TELL
When Unacademy cut advertising 33% in FY23, its net loss did not widen. It fell 41%, while revenue still grew 26%. The brand stayed famous and the finances improved. That is the proof the visibility was already banked. The spend was buying repetition, not growth.
Frequently asked questions
How much did Unacademy spend on IPL sponsorship?
Unacademy signed a reported Rs 120 to 130 crore deal to be an official IPL central sponsor for three seasons from 2020 to 2022, plus roughly Rs 30 to 35 crore on brand activations in the first year. Its wider advertising spend was far larger, at Rs 548.7 crore in FY22 alone.
Did Unacademy’s marketing spend work?
As advertising, yes. The IPL sponsorship and celebrity campaigns made Unacademy a household name in edtech. The issue was that high awareness did not convert into enough paying subscribers, because its paid exam-prep plans suited a narrow, high-intent audience rather than the mass cricket market.
Why did Unacademy’s valuation crash?
Unacademy peaked at a $3.44 billion valuation in August 2021 during the pandemic edtech boom. As students returned to offline classes and growth slowed, its valuation fell below $500 million by late 2025, according to founder Gaurav Munjal, close to a 90% decline.
Did cutting advertising help Unacademy?
The numbers suggest it did. In FY23, Unacademy cut advertising spend by about 33% to Rs 370.2 crore, revenue still grew 26% to Rs 907 crore, and net loss narrowed 41% to Rs 1,678.1 crore. Spending less on visibility coincided with a healthier P&L.
How many people did Unacademy lay off?
Across 2022 and 2023, Unacademy cut roughly 1,700 roles in stages, including about 1,000 in April 2022, around 350 in November 2022, and about 350 in March 2023, alongside founder and leadership salary cuts, as part of a push toward profitability.
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Sources: FY22 and FY23 financials, advertising and losses: Inc42. IPL central-sponsor deal: Inc42 and CricTracker; brand-activation spend: Exchange4media. Layoffs and cost cuts: TechCrunch. Peak valuation: Business Standard. Valuation fall and upGrad talks: Forbes India.
This article is independent commentary and fair-comment analysis based on publicly reported figures from named sources. It draws on reporting and company disclosures as cited. Figures are as reported by those sources and refer to the fiscal years stated. Nothing here alleges wrongdoing by Unacademy, its founders or its investors. Unacademy’s advertising and sponsorships are entirely legal and normal business activity. By Amisha.
