As it struggles to strengthen its finances and generate profits, Indian education technology company Byju’s has allegedly chosen to fire almost 2,500 of its staff members. The $22 million start-up stated in a statement that the layoffs are a step toward cost-cutting and achieving overall profitability.
Due to rising advertising and labour costs, the online learning platform recorded a deficit of 45.64 billion rupees ($554.77 million) for the fiscal year 2021 in May. According to a statement obtained by Moneycontrol.com, ‘about 5% of BYJU’S 50,000-strong staff is planned to be rationalised across product, content, media, and technology teams in a stepwise way to reduce redundancies and duplication of responsibilities, and by better leveraging technology’.
Aside from the core team comprising the sales and marketing, operations, content, and design teams, the people who have been fired are from its subsidiary companies like Toppr and WhiteHat Jr. Aakash and Great Learning will operate as independent organisations, however the company has combined its subsidiaries Toppr, Meritnation, TutorVista, Scholar, and HashLearn into one corporate entity.
Toppr alone reportedly saw the most layoffs with 350, while another 300 employees are reportedly being asked to submit their resignations. They have been informed that if they don’t submit their resignation, their pay for the next one to one and a half months would be withheld.
Moreover, 600 contract workers have been told to leave. To its existing strength of 20,000 teachers, the firm asserted that it will increase that number by 10,000 in 2023. The choice to lay off staff was made in response to declining demand for Byju’s services, which had peaked during the Covid lockdown when schools were shuttered for a number of months.
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