Indian education tech giant Byju’s has reportedly decided to lay off around 2,500 of its employees as it struggles to improve its finances and book profits.
In a statement on Wednesday, the $22 million valued start-up said that the layoffs are a step to cut costs and achieve overall profitability.
In May, the online learning platform had reported a loss of 45.64 billion rupees ($554.77 million) for fiscal 2021 due to higher promotion and employee expenses.
“To avoid redundancies and duplication of roles, and by leveraging technology better, around five per cent of BYJU’S 50,000-strong workforce is expected to be rationalised across product, content, media, and technology teams in a phased manner,” the statement said, according to Moneycontrol.com.
The employees who have been sacked are from its subsidiary units like Toppr, and WhiteHat Jr, apart from the core team of sales and marketing, operations, content and design teams.
Moreover, they have consolidated its subsidiaries like Toppr, Meritnation, TutorVista, Scholar, and HashLearn, into a single business unit, while Aakash and Great Learning will function as separate organisations.
According to reports, Toppr alone has seen the maximum number of layoffs with 350, while another 300 employees are being asked to put in their papers, .
They have been told that their salaries for about 1-1.5 months would be withheld if they fail to hand in their resignation.
Moreover, 600 contractual employees have been asked to leave. However, the company said it would add 10,000 teachers in 2023 to its current strength of 20,000.
The decision to retrench employees comes in the wake of dwindling demand for Byju’s services, which had reached its peak during the Covid lockdown when schools were closed for several months.
