A few days after sharing a series of tweets on what went wrong with Invact Metaversity, CEO and Director Manish Maheshwari stepped down.
Here is the official update. As of May 27, 2022, Manish Maheshwari stepped down from his position as Chief Executive Officer and Director of Invact, Inc. The decision to part ways came out of the divergent visions that the two founders, Tanay Pratap and Maheshwari, had for the long-term prospects of the company, according to an explanation. Under the leadership of Tanay, Invact will continue to do its best to make quality education accessible via Metaversity, the tweet stated.
Maheshwari shared a tweet about his departure. As founders, we are passionate and uncompromising about what we believe in. While we are parting ways, we have fond memories of working together not just as colleagues, but as brothers. He tweeted about his relationship with Pratap.
I will be cheering for Invact to become the next unicorn and eventually go for an IPO under his leadership, Maheshwari said, and also said he was going to take a break for a few months and pursue new opportunities.
Changes are often heartbreaking but sometimes necessary. We started together, built together, and celebrated together. Invact will continue to build on its vision of access to quality education for all. Pratap shared the announcement tweet while saying goodbyes are always hard.
Maheshwari had tweeted on May 23 that their vision for Invact Metaversity was not delivered the way we had envisioned, which eventually resulted in courses being cancelled and students fees being refunded.
He said in his tweets that this difference of opinion between him and Pratap has led to a point where they have to either cut the burn rate and pivot to another idea, let either founder take full charge or return the unspent capital to investors.
A tweet shared by the director of content sales at the edtech firm Unacademy Ravi Handa shed some light on Pratap's side of the story and said a series of meetings had taken place between the founders and investors to figure out the way forward. The decision ultimately came down to Maheshwari being offered $100,000 in cash to leave the company with some investors feeling that the company was being held hostage by the CEO.