Internet Slams Unacademy CEO for Wearing $400 T-Shirt While Freezing Employee Appraisals

Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal has been facing online criticism since last week for his perceived insensitive choice of attire during a recent virtual town hall meeting. While announcing that employees would not receive salary appraisals this year, Munjal wore a $400 Burberry T-shirt, which many saw as a stark contrast to the disappointing news. This prompted widespread discussion and disapproval on social media platforms, including Reddit, where a user shared a clip highlighting Munjal’s expensive clothing.

“This is Burberry Black Parker tshirt with embroidered logo. Yeah agreed that one shouldn’t go after their personal stuff. But it is what it is,” the user commented.

In his town hall address to employees, Munjal said that they had not met their growth targets and therefore would not be holding appraisals for the workforce. In the meeting he said,

“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.” said Munjal

Unacademy didn’t meet its goals because of some tough challenges. The company faced strong opposition in the industry, a hard market, and less money coming in from its in-person learning centers. These challenges made it difficult for Unacademy to grow as planned,

“It’s been tough, and that’s why I have one bad news that we won’t be able to do any appraisals this year. I know I said that we will do appraisals two, three weeks ago, but when we started the process, we realized that we made a mistake,” Munjal added.

CEO Gaurav Munjal recognized that some employees have gone without appraisals for two years, but he encouraged them to consider the company’s overall situation and long-term prospects, rather than just focusing on individual evaluations.

One user wrote, “These CEO’s won’t lower their own standard of living but rather stop appraisals for the people who are running their businesses.” Social media users were swift to call out the apparent disconnect between Mr. Munjal’s message and his attire.

“Just take a paycut! That money could have been used to give appraisal to many employees. The ratio of CEOs salary to an average employee salary is still too huge,” said another.

“This reminds me of an ex Boeing CEO addressing that company is facing losses meanwhile wearing his expensive designer suits and Patek Philippes with huge salaries lol,” a third user said.

“This is an average story not only limited to a start-up. CEO or chairman’s take all the benefits from Govt, market, earn crores. When there is time to give back something to employees they call it tough times n bla bla,” another user shared their thoughts.