Unacademy in Hot Water as CEO Flaunts ₹33K T-Shirt While Announcing No Hike for Staff

New Delhi: Unacdemy CEO, Gaurav Munjal has recently grabbed the headlines for announcing that employees of the ed tech start-up would not receive a hike this year while flaunting a $400 Burberry t-shirt.

Munjal took to the company's Virtual town hall to announce the decision while wearing a $400 Burberry t-shirt and leaving the internet stunned. 

A Reddit user shared the video on the platform while pointing out the founder's expensive t-shirt.

The video was captioned: "This is Burberry Black Parker t-shirt with embroidered logo. Yeah, agreed that one shouldn't go after their stuff. But it is what it is," the user wrote.''

In his address, he also mentioned that the company has not been able to meet their growth expectations this year "I think 2023 was an average year for us. But 2024, if not great, was above average. But we did not hit our growth goals. The good part is that the burn is extremely low now, and we have a huge runway. And I kept saying that we don't have a survival risk," he said. 

While he acknowledged that some employees have not received an appraisal for the past two years, he asked them to look at the bigger picture. “We are the ones who are still standing while our competitors are going down one by one,” he added.

Netizens Reactions:

Eagle-eyed netizens however did not stop from calling out the irony.

A user wrote: These CEOs won't lower their standard of living but rather stop appraisals for the people who are running their businesses.

Another user criticized the CEO by commenting “Who told him to keep unrealistic growth rate goals? If they are not making losses, every employee should get a salary hike,”

''This is capitalism. The CEOs/executives are getting rewarded the more cost cuttings like this or layoffs they do. After every layoff in big tech, their share prices grew. So there is no real harm (in the short term) for these companies if they pull these off. Always be on the lookout for better opportunities elsewhere or even better to keep a secondary income source going'' expressed another user.