Samay Raina clearly wasn’t going to let Gaurav Munjal’s big Unacademy deal pass without a joke.After the edtech company was acquired by upGrad for a little over $200 million (around ₹1,680 crore), the comedian took a playful swipe at his friend over just how far the company’s valuation has fallen.And Munjal played along.Raina shared a picture with the Unacademy co-founder on Instagram and congratulated him in his usual, rather savage, style.“Congratulations to my friend Gaurav Munjal for selling his company Unacademy for just $200 million dollars when he could have sold it earlier at $3.4 billion dollars,” Raina wrote.The joke, of course, was about Unacademy’s massive valuation in 2021. The company had once been valued at $3.44 billion (around ₹28,900 crore) after raising $440 million from investors including Temasek, General Atlantic and SoftBank Vision Fund.Fast forward to 2026, and the company has been acquired for just over $200 million.Munjal didn’t appear to take the roast too seriously.Replying to Raina’s post on X, he wrote, “Who needs enemies when you have such friends.” He added a smiling emoji, making it clear he was taking the joke in the spirit it was intended.But behind the Instagram banter is a pretty dramatic business story.Unacademy was once one of India’s biggest edtech startups. It became a unicorn in 2020 and reached its peak valuation the following year, when investors valued the company at $3.44 billion.The latest deal values it at roughly 94% less than that peak valuation.Munjal himself acknowledged the sharp fall rather openly.In a LinkedIn post, he pointed out that Unacademy had become a unicorn six years ago and had now completed its acquisition by upGrad for just over $200 million.“We raised at a peak, but sold at a fraction of that. I’m not going to dress these facts up,” Munjal wrote.There was no attempt to hide how different the two numbers are. Still, Munjal said he remained proud of what the company and its team managed to build during those years.Unacademy had set out to make online education more accessible and went on to become one of the most recognisable names in India’s edtech boom.Munjal summed up the journey by saying he was proud of what the team achieved “between those two numbers.”And while Raina’s post may have been brutal, Munjal’s response suggests there are no hard feelings – at least not between these two friends.Sometimes, apparently, the best way to deal with a $3.44-billion-to-$200-million fall is to let your comedian friend make the joke first.
