Three people with knowledge of the situation claim that Byju’s has terminated over 1,000 employees as part of a new wave of layoffs at the sole edtech decacorn. There have been two rounds of layoffs in the last six months.
Byju’s spokesman has declined to comment on the incident, but fired employees have brought attention to the problem on LinkedIn and Twitter. This development was initially reported by YourStory.
Byju’s revealed in October 2022 that it would be eliminating 5% of its employment, which would affect close to 2,500 workers. Following that, the business said that the action was taken to optimize expenditure and operating costs.
“Byju’s has laid off 1000 employees across sales, marketing and communications and engineering departments,” said one of the sources requesting anonymity. “Rather than letting them go, the company asked most of the impacted employees to resign abruptly.”
Following the move then, Byju’s founder and CEO Byju Raveendran sent an email to employees saying, “I am truly sorry to those who will have to leave BYJU’S. You are not just a name to me. You are not a number. You are not just five percent of my company. You are five percent of me.”
The reopening of schools and coaching centers combined with the financial winter during the global recession proved to be a double whammy for the startups in this industry, although the pandemic served as a positive for edtech firms like Byju’s in India.
According to Byju’s complete annual financial statement filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) for the fiscal year ending March 2021, its income from operations increased by just 4% to Rs 2280 crore in FY21 from Rs 2,189 crore the previous fiscal year (FY20). While this was happening, the company’s losses grew 14.9X to Rs 4,564 crore.
Byju’s and several other firms have started talking about profitability and long-term sustainability while the “funding winter” continues. However, thousands of workers at these businesses have been impacted by the cost-cutting efforts.
Over 25 startups saw layoffs in January, according to data gathered by Fintrackr, and over 3,000 employees were affected. According to a story in The Morning Context, Byju’s is in the midst of terminating up to 5,000 workers.
