“Is it jetlag? Why is my mind going numb? Am I dreaming?” an inquisitive Gaurav Munjal wondered after a spate of whirlwind meetings. “I was just absorbing and writing. I was not reacting,” recalls the co-founder and chief executive officer of Unacademy who was in New York with friend Roman Saini. It was a gruelling week. The co-founders of India’s biggest online test prep platform had pitched to over a dozen hedge funds for their next round of funding over six days, and they were exhausted. To make matters worse, a bunch of deep-pocketed funders, who were more than keen to meet the founders just a few months ago, played truant. “It was shocking. They were the ones chasing us and now they disappeared,” says Munjal.
(This story appears in the 01 July, 2022 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)