Byju’s continues to cut jobs, another 1,000 employees laid off

Many senior vice presidents drawing salaries of Rs 1 crore and above lost their jobs in the Bengaluru-based edtech major’s latest round of layoffs conducted over the last two weeks of January, one of the sources said.

The layoffs are part of a massive cost cutting exercise Byju’s initiated last year to streamline its operations at a time when digital K12 education businesses are finding it difficult to acquire new customers.

Byju’s had in October 2022 said it was laying off 5% of its employees totalling around 2,500.

The total layoffs, however, are much higher in scale and it is said to be in the range of 10,000, people cited above told ET.

A company spokesperson did not respond to ET’s query on the matter till press time on Thursday.

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A former Byju’s employee said a majority of its staff were employed in functions like sales, mentoring, customer support, editing, content and entry-level positions. The company employed about 15,000 people in the sales function alone as of FY22, up from 3,300 in FY19, he said.The Prosus-backed company has been engulfed in controversies – ranging from misselling allegations to governance issues – over the past many months.

As a result, last month it implemented a four-tier internal sales process, replacing its existing direct sales programme.

Last month, the edtech also sought more time from creditors to renegotiate an agreement relating to a $1.2-billion loan that it has failed to pay off, as per a Bloomberg report.

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Byju’s had announced its audited results for FY21 after an 18-month delay in September last year, with total loss amounting to Rs 4,588 crore, which was 18 times its loss in the previous year. Revenue from operations had been readjusted to Rs 2,280 crore, a drop of around 50% from the projected revenue of about Rs 4,400 crore cited in the unaudited results.

The company has again missed the deadline to file its FY22 financials with the regulator, but reported about Rs 10,000 crore in gross revenues in the period on the basis of unaudited results in September last year. Even then, it had disclosed plans to hire a total of 10,000 more teachers in 2023, adding to its then strength of 20,000 teachers.

Massive financial losses and mass layoffs have gripped Indian edtechs as demand for online-led education corrects from its peaks post-Covid.

Among 52 startups that fired 17,989 employees across sectors in 2022, about 44% of the layoffs occurred within 15 edtech companies, as per Longhouse Consulting data shared exclusively with ET.

These edtechs include Byju’s, Unacademy, Vedantu, Byju’s-owned WhiteHat Jr and Toppr, Practically, FrontRow, Lido, Invact Metaversity, Yellow Class, Teachmint, Lead, Udayy, Crejo.Fun and Eruditus.

Online tutoring platform Vedantu in December dismissed 385 employees in its fourth round of layoffs in 2022 while test preparation platform Unacademy cut 350 jobs in November in its second tranche of layoffs in the year, bringing its total firing tally to 1,000.

A funding winter in the meanwhile also led to a slump in overall edtech startup investments to $2.6 billion in 2022 from $4.1 billion in 2021. It was $2.3 billion in 2020.

Also read: 2022 Year in Review | As the pandemic bubble bursts, edtechs back in class

Notably, Byju’s brought its tally of acquisitions to edtech companies for a combined transaction value of $2.5 billion in 2021. Major deals included Aakash Educational Services for $1 billion and Great Learning for $600 million.

Despite the doom and gloom, edtechs are still fleshing out new plans in trial and error mode. Even as Unacademy just cancelled its cash appraisals for 2023, its upskilling platform Relevel, which helps job seekers qualify for various roles, is undergoing a major pivot and to focus on test products and its new app NextLevel.

ET also reported last month that Byju’s has launched one-on-one home tuition services to tap into a new target group in its mainstay K12 segment, starting from Bengaluru.