Roman Saini

Timeline

1. 2008Clears the AIIMS entrance examination at 16 and joins AIIMS New Delhi for an MBBS.At the time AIIMS ran its own entrance test, which merged into NEET UG in 2020.^[2]
2. 2013Completes his medical degree by 21 and works briefly as a junior resident doctor at AIIMS New Delhi.The junior resident post ran from February to June 2014 according to his LinkedIn profile.^[2]
3. 2014Clears the UPSC civil services examination on his first attempt at 22 with All India Rank 18, and joins the IAS in the Madhya Pradesh cadre.He was part of the 2014 IAS batch.^[1]^[2]
4. 2015Co-founds Unacademy with Gaurav Munjal and Hemesh Singh while still in the service.The company began as a YouTube channel of free lessons.^[2]^[3]
5. 2016Resigns from the IAS in January after one year and eight months, and moves into Unacademy full time.Indian Startup News says he left the service in 2015; Moneycontrol, citing his LinkedIn, gives January 2016.^[1]^[2]
6. 2018 to 2021Unacademy expands through acquisitions and a subscription business, reaching a valuation of $3.44 billion in 2021.The peak was roughly Rs 28,700 crore.^[2]^[3]
7. 2021 to 2025The funding winter forces layoffs, cost cuts and a retreat from some verticals, and the valuation falls sharply.By mid 2026 the company was reported at around Rs 2,055 crore.^[2]^[3]
8. 2026upGrad completes its all-stock acquisition of Unacademy on 1 September for a little over $200 million.More than 90 per cent below the 2021 peak.^[3]
9. 2026In October he and Munjal are reported to be raising Longshot Capital, a Rs 700 crore AI and deeptech fund. Saini runs it full time.Reported by The Economic Times and Indian Startup News.^[1]^[3]

Who Roman Saini is

Roman Saini is an Indian doctor, former civil servant and entrepreneur. He is one of the three co-founders of Unacademy, the edtech platform that began as a YouTube channel in 2015 and was sold to upGrad in September 2026. Since October 2026 he has been raising Longshot Capital, a Rs 700 crore fund for AI and deeptech, as its full-time general partner.^[2][3]

His career is unusual even by the standards of Indian founders. He entered medical school at 16, qualified as a doctor, cleared the civil services examination at 22 with a rank in the top twenty, joined the IAS, and then resigned within two years to build an education company. Very few people have held all three of those positions, and fewer still have walked away from the third.^[1][2]

The public record of his early life is short but specific. Moneycontrol reports that he was born into a middle class family in Jaipur, Rajasthan. No date of birth, school or family detail beyond that has been published in the sources used here, and none has been added.^[2]

Jaipur and AIIMS at sixteen

Saini grew up in Jaipur in a middle class household and showed academic ability early. In 2008, at 16, he cleared the All India Institute of Medical Sciences entrance examination and joined AIIMS New Delhi for an MBBS. In that period AIIMS set its own entrance paper, a separate and famously competitive exam, before it was folded into NEET UG in 2020.^[2]

He completed the medical degree by 21 and worked briefly as a junior resident doctor at AIIMS. His LinkedIn profile, as reported by Moneycontrol, dates that post to February to June 2014. It is a short clinical stint, and it is the only part of his medical career that has been documented in any detail.^[2]

The AIIMS credential matters for how he is introduced in India. It is one of the hardest institutions in the country to enter, and it gave him a public identity as a doctor before he had any connection to business. When he later appeared in edtech advertising and interviews, the doctor label came first.^[2]

The UPSC detour and the IAS years

After medical school Saini decided to prepare for the Union Public Service Commission's civil services examination. He cleared it on his first attempt at 22 with All India Rank 18, a result that put him among the top entrants of his year. He joined the 2014 IAS batch and was allotted the Madhya Pradesh cadre.^[1][2]

He joined the service in June 2014. His tenure was short. According to the account based on his LinkedIn profile, he served for one year and eight months and resigned in January 2016. Indian Startup News, reporting on the fund, says he left the service in 2015 to build Unacademy. The two accounts differ by a few months and neither is a formal service record.^[1][2]

The IAS period overlaps with the founding of Unacademy, which he started with Munjal and Hemesh Singh in 2015. That overlap is the part of the story that is usually told as a leap of faith: a young officer with a secure career giving it up for a YouTube channel about exam preparation.^[2][3]

Leaving the service and starting Unacademy

Unacademy began as a YouTube channel of free educational videos. Munjal, then an engineering student in Mumbai, had started uploading tutorials, and in December 2015 he brought in Saini and Hemesh Singh to launch the app. The proposition was simple: quality lessons for competitive exams without the cost of a coaching institute.^[2][3]

Saini's contribution was credibility as much as capital. He had cleared the two kinds of examination that Unacademy's earliest users were preparing for, and his name carried the authority of a doctor who had ranked 18 in the civil services. For a UPSC aspirant in 2016, that was a stronger recommendation than any advertisement.^[2]

The company grew from that base into a platform with live classes, recorded lectures, mock tests and courses for UPSC, IIT-JEE and NEET. It raised money from investors including Facebook, which made a direct investment in 2019, and by 2021 it had raised $860 million in total.^[2][3]

Unacademy's rise and the 2021 peak

The expansion was fast and acquisitive. Unacademy bought WiFiStudy, Kreatryx, CodeChef, PrepLadder, Mastree, Coursavy, TapChief, Rheo TV and Swiflearn between 2018 and 2021, and launched Unacademy Plus, its subscription product, in 2019. The platform became one of the two or three names that defined Indian edtech.^[2]

In August 2021 the company raised $440 million in a Series H led by Temasek at a valuation of $3.44 billion, or roughly Rs 28,700 crore. It was the high point of the pandemic-era boom, when investors priced Indian education technology as a winner-takes-most market.^[2][3]

The crash was equally fast. The funding winter, the return to physical school and the cost of the acquisition spree forced layoffs and a strategic reset. By mid 2026, according to Moneycontrol, Unacademy was valued at around Rs 2,055 crore, a fraction of its peak, and was in the process of being sold.^[2][3]

The sale to upGrad

upGrad signed a term sheet for Unacademy in March 2026, structured as a 100 per cent share swap. The Competition Commission of India approved the combination on 7 July, and the deal closed on 1 September. The price was a little over $200 million, reported at about Rs 1,955 crore.^[3]

For Saini the sale closed a chapter that had run for a decade. He had left the IAS for the company, built it through its best years, and watched its value fall by more than 90 per cent. Unlike Munjal, who stayed on as chief executive, Saini's role after the acquisition is not described in the coverage.^[1][3]

The deal also freed both founders to do something else. Within two months they were raising a venture fund. That sequence, sell the company and start managing outside capital, has become common among Indian founders of their generation.^[1][3]

The Karan Sangwan episode

In August 2023 Unacademy dismissed a teacher, Karan Sangwan, after a video circulated in which he urged students not to vote for politicians who only focused on changing names and to elect well educated candidates. The dismissal became a national argument about the political speech of teachers on private platforms.^[2]

Saini defended the decision publicly. He said the classroom was not a place to share personal opinions and views, and that the company had been forced to terminate the contract because of its code of conduct. Arvind Kejriwal, then the chief minister of Delhi, questioned whether asking people to vote for educated candidates was a crime, and several politicians criticised the company.^[2]

The episode is one of the few times Saini rather than Munjal was the public face of a company decision. It also shows the limit of the founder as teacher model: when an educator has a following, the platform inherits the political consequences of what he says.^[2]

Angel investing and Longshot Capital

Saini and Munjal have invested together for more than a decade. Between them they have put over Rs 25 crore into more than 200 companies, including Pine Labs, Dhan, Ultrahuman, Snabbit, Swish, STAGE, Seekho and Third Wave Coffee, and in August 2026 they invested in Superleap, an AI-native customer relationship platform.^[1][3]

Longshot Capital formalises that activity. The fund is registered as a Category II alternative investment fund with a target of Rs 700 crore, commitments of around Rs 250 crore to Rs 300 crore, and a first close targeted for January 2027. It will invest in 25 to 28 companies at seed and pre-Series A with cheques of $500,000 to $1.5 million, for target ownership of 8 to 12 per cent.^[1][3]

The mandate covers AI-led businesses and deeptech segments such as manufacturing, space, defence and robotics, but not consumer brands or retail. Capital will be deployed over three years, the fund will live for 10 to 11 years, and it will back India-based startups as well as companies founded by people of Indian origin abroad.^[1][3]

Running the fund full time

Saini is the full-time general partner. Munjal is involved part-time while he continues as chief executive of Unacademy. That division is the reason the fund can claim a full-time manager and still use Munjal's name in fundraising.^[1][3]

The role suits him. He has been the operating co-founder, the teacher and the public defender of company decisions, and he has been an angel investor across more than two hundred companies. A seed fund is a portfolio of small positions and long relationships, which is closer to angel investing than to running an edtech platform.^[1][3]

The test will come with the first close and the first three investments. If Longshot backs a robotics or space company with a long development cycle, the deeptech claim is real. If the first cheques cluster in AI software, the fund is closer to a founder's angel syndicate with a licence.^[1]

What has not been confirmed

No date of birth, age or family detail for Roman Saini beyond his birth in Jaipur into a middle class family has been published in the sources used here. His school and his undergraduate path before AIIMS are not recorded. The year he cleared the civil services examination is not stated in the coverage, only that he joined the 2014 IAS batch.^[1][2]

The date he left the IAS is contested by the sources: Indian Startup News says 2015, while Moneycontrol, relying on his LinkedIn profile, says January 2016 after one year and eight months. This entry records both rather than choosing.^[1][2]

His shareholding in Unacademy, the value of his stake after the upGrad share swap, and his personal net worth are not public. The Rs 25 crore angel figure is the combined amount invested by him and Munjal. Longshot Capital has not held a first close, its final size is unknown and its limited partners have not been named.^[1][3]