On November 28, Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal criticised the language-learning app Duolingo in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter). The CEO wrote about his personal experience with the app and pointed out the problem as an oversimplification of the problem statement.
Munjal tweeted, “A few months ago, I achieved a 100-day streak on Duolingo for Spanish. However, I still couldn’t speak or write even a few sentences in Spanish.” Further said, "A Language Learning Product that actually helps you learn the Language instead of being a status symbol for a virtual reward which is the Streak."
With this incident as an instance, he explained the motivation behind creating Airlearn, a new learning platform aimed at addressing the gaps he observed in existing language education tools.
Duolingo vs Airlearn
He said that the first problem with Duolingo is the oversimplification of the problem statement. Duolingo does not teach you basic concepts of grammar. “It just makes you do the exercises with the hope that you’ll learn them on your own,” he pointed out.
Comparing this with Airlearn, he said, “Whereas Airlearn’s Teaching Slides make sure that you know the Concept first. Our Users love these Slides."
He further added “We believe that AI will change personalised tutoring. But it won’t be just about gamification or make you do exercises. It will be about teaching you like a Tutor sitting in front of you will teach. And that’s the design principle we follow while building Airlearn.”
In the posts, Munjal also shared multiple screenshots of users’ reviews of Airlearn claiming “Everyday we are making more and more people switch from Duolingo to Airlearn.”
Earlier this month, Munjal shared an X post where he revealed that one million lessons were completed on Airlearn in October this year. He said that the majority of the users are from the US, while “Spanish and French are the most popular languages.”
