Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal came into controversy last week when he announced there would be no employee appraisals this year because the company is unable to meet the growth target and faces a decline in revenue while wearing a $400 (Rs 30,000) Burberry T-shirt during a virtual town hall meeting.

Gaurav Munjal quotes the company’s failure to meet growth targets as the reason for halting appraisals. 

 A video of the Unacademy CEO was shared on Reddit.

During the meeting, he stated, “I think 2023 was an average year for us. But 2024, if not great, was above average. But we did not hit our growth goal.”. 

And later, he acknowledged the difficult decision. “It’s been tough, and that’s why I have one bad news: we won’t be able to do any appraisals this year." Later, he accepts his mistake of promising appraisals in the past week: “I know I said that we would do appraisals two or three weeks ago, but when we started the process, we realized that we made a mistake.”.

Munjal attributes the company’s underperformance to market challenges, low growth, and declining revenue from offline centers. Despite the declining growth, he ensures that the company is not at risk of failure, stating, “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.”. 

Gaurav Munjal urged the employees to consider the broader context but said that they needed to note that Unacademy was still operational while their competitors were struggling.

“We are the ones who are still standing while our competitors are going down one by one.”. 

But this incident came to light because social media users called out the irony of his expensive attire because, during the announcement, he was wearing Burberry's Black Parker T-shirt, which is priced between $300 and $570 (Rs 16,000 and Rs 47,000) in various markets.

This incident comes shortly after Unacademy laid off 250 employees to smooth operations.