Inside Unacademy’s leadership changes; Flextron’s 10-minute EV charging

Hello,

Practo’s healthcare-at-a-click service is looking beyond borders—to the UAE.

The platform, now accessible to users in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Sharjah, finally extends its consumer-facing operations to the region, where the company already has a decade-long presence through its hospital management software.

Practo said it has crossed Rs 13 crore in gross merchandise value (GMV) in the UAE and onboarded over 250 paying customers. The company also said it has captured 10% of Dubai’s population on an annual usage basis.

Meanwhile, Myntra is also getting a boost from overseas as its Singapore-based parent company FK Myntra Holdings is infusing $125 million in capital into the fashion ecommerce company through a rights issue. 

Speaking of fashion, it’s a widely accepted assumption that ultra-posh brands that sell to the world’s top 1% should be able to enjoy a steady market, despite the state of the economy. But do they?

From Christian Dior to Chanel, several luxury brands have seen a dip in sales in recent times, sharply contrasting with the performances of peers like Hermès and Cartier owner Richemont. The difference? Their approach to pricing. 

Meanwhile, luxury group Kering has a bigger, burgeoning debt problem on hand—and its Gucci addiction might just have cost it dearly.

More money, more problems. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Inside Unacademy’s leadership changes
• Flextron’s 10-minute EV charging
• TrueFoundry simplifies ML deployment

Here’s your trivia for today: Which country pioneered the concept of ‘Gross National Happiness’?

Edtech

Inside Unacademy’s leadership changes

Unacademy co-founders Gaurav Munjal and Roman Saini are stepping away from their daily roles at the edtech firm as they shift their focus to AirLearn, the company’s language learning app, which is expected to be spun off into a separate entity, people familiar with the matter told YourStory. 

Sumit Jain, Founder of Graphy—acquired by Unacademy a few years ago and who was elevated to co-founder status in 2023—is expected to take over the reins of the edtech company, sources said.

Key takeaways:

• Munjal and Saini’s departure comes as the Bengaluru-based company has shifted its focus to offline operations to revive growth, following a decline in revenue from its core online test preparation business in the post-pandemic environment.
• More importantly, a potential merger or sale involving the edtech company did not materialise, partly due to differences in Unacademy’s valuation, sources noted. In a social media post last July, Munjal said the edtech company had engaged in exploratory merger talks with other market players. 
• Even after the failed merger talks with Allen and Aakash, Unacademy has explored potential mergers with other edtech players, including PhysicsWallah and larger education firms, as its investors continue to push for an acquisition, The CapTable reported in September 2024.

Funding Alert

Startup: Myntra

Amount: $125M

Round: Rights issue

Startup: ILIOS 72

Amount: Rs 1 Cr

Round: Seed

Startup: GROWiT

Amount: $3M

Round: Series A

Startup

Flextron’s 10-minute EV charging

What if an electric two-wheeler could go from zero to fully charged in just 10 minutes? No waiting for hours or planning schedules around charging stops—that’s the future Flextron is building, one fast-charging battery at a time.

The Bengaluru-based B2B EV tech startup was founded by Ameen Khan, Mukesh R Jogi, Crystal Lobo, Nipun Pise, and Royan Rebello. The co-founders started Flextron with just Rs 10 lakh in savings, officially launching its core products in 2025. 

Bold moves:

• FlexStack is a battery pack capable of 10-minute rapid charging for two-wheelers, while FlexGrid is a DC fast charger that delivers the power required to support such high-speed charging. 
• The startup currently manufactures AC chargers, DC fast chargers, and battery packs in-house, with plans to outsource battery assembly to a contract manufacturer as demand scales. The AC charger manufacturing unit, located in HSR Layout, Bengaluru, produces up to 2,000 units monthly.
• With the commercial launch of FlexStack in 2025, it has more than 1,000 FlexStack batteries in the order pipeline across three clients. The company is projecting Rs 5 crore in revenue from battery sales alone this year.

Startup

TrueFoundry simplifies ML deployment

Building a machine learning model is only half the journey. Getting it to run reliably in the real world often requires navigating complex infrastructure. The transition from building on Jupyter Notebooks to creating a production-grade service typically demands DevOps, which can be quite challenging for many. 

This is where TrueFoundry comes in. It offers a platform that runs on Kubernetes, but shields users from its complexity, helping enterprise AI/ML teams build, deploy, and manage large language model applications easily.

The workings:

• The San Francisco-based enterprise PaaS was founded by Anuraag Gutgutia, Abhishek Choudhary, and Nikunj Bajaj in 2021. It sees traction from the US, Europe, and India from healthcare segments, including manufacturing, pharma, insurance, and medical devices; software and SaaS; and financial services.
• The company broadly classifies its suite of product offerings into four categories: Model Serving, LLMOps, AI gateway, and RAG.
• In February, TrueFoundry raised $19 million in Series A funding led by Intel Capital. The round also saw participation from Eniac Ventures and Peak XV’s Surge, Jump Capital, Gokul Rajaram, Mohit Aron, and Cyan Banister, among others.

News & updates

• Upgrade: DeepSeek completed what it described as a “minor trial upgrade” to its R1 AI model and told users they could start testing it, according to a company representative’s post in an official WeChat group. The company didn’t provide details about the upgrade.
• IPO: OpenAI’s restructuring plans position it for a potential future IPO, but any such decision would depend on the mood in public markets and the readiness of the company, CFO Sarah Friar said. OpenAI outlined plans in December to convert its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation, but dialled back the plan earlier this month.
• New hire: Indian airline IndiGo appointed Vikram Singh Mehta as the Chairman of its board. Mehta, an existing board member of IndiGo, will succeed Venkataramani Sumantran, who took charge as Chairman three years ago at the start of a post-pandemic rebound in air travel.

Which country pioneered the concept of ‘Gross National Happiness’?

Answer: Bhutan.

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