In a bid to recalibrate business priorities, Byju’s has opted the downsizing route. The online education provider has allegedly laid off 2,000 employees across its group companies as the unicorn looks to mitigate the effects of slowing demand after two years of hypergrowth, according to Indian media reports.
The Byju Raveendran-led edtech platform has laid off full-time and contractual employees from Toppr, WhiteHat Jr, and its core team across sales and marketing, operations, content and design teams. About 1,200 employees from Toppr alone were sacked, including 300-350 permanent employees, while another 300 employees were reportedly told to tender their resignations, or were told that they will not get salaries for about 1 to 1.5 months.
Moreover, about 600 contractual employees were laid off, whose tenures were scheduled to end around October or November, this year, according to reports.
However, a spokesperson from Byju’s refuted the number of persons being sacked, saying: “We strongly deny the misinformation. To recalibrate our business priorities and accelerate our long-term growth, we are optimizing our teams from our group companies. This entire exercise involves less than 500 employees from across Byju’s Group companies.”
This comes days after a Bloomberg report showed that Byju’s was delaying payments for an approximately $1 billion acquisition deal finalised last year, citing sources familiar with the development.
News agencies reported that edtech major Byju’s group firm Toppr has laid off 1,100 staff or about 36 per cent of its workforce from the company earlier this week, according to some of the employees who have been hit by the decision.
Toppr’s sacked employees said that they got a call from the company Monday and were asked to resign, failing which they will be terminated without any notice period.
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