Byju's Sacks 1,000 Employees As Phased Layoffs Continue: Report

Last year in October, Byju’s announced sacking of as many as 2,500 employees, or five per cent of its workforce, as it chalked out a plan to become profitable by March 2023.

Edtech unicorn Byju's sacked 15 per cent of its employees, mostly from its engineering teams, in a fresh round of layoffs. According to an IANS report, the company asked more than 1,000 workers, or 15 per cent of its workforce, to leave. This comes as the company is trying to bring down costs amid slower revenue growth. The company is continuing with phased layoffs to remain growth-oriented in the global economic meltdown, the report said. 

Last year in October, Byju’s announced sacking of as many as 2,500 employees, or five per cent of its workforce, as it chalked out a plan to become profitable by March 2023. It was reported that this plan will lead to retrenchment of five per cent of employees or about 2,500 people in the next six months.

Byju's co-founder Divya Gokulnath had told PTI, "We have designed a path to profitability which we plan to achieve by March 2023. We have built significant brand awareness throughout India and there is scope to optimise marketing budget and prioritise the spends in a way that it creates a global footprint. Second is operational cost and the third is integration of multiple business units."

She said that to avoid redundancies and duplication of roles, and by leveraging technology better, around five per cent of Byju's 50,000 workforce is expected to be rationalised across product, content, media, and technology teams.

According to another report by MoneyControl, Byju’s is laying off around 1,000-1,200 employees from the engineering, sales, logistics, marketing, and communications teams on February 2. Citing at least three people familiar with the matter the report said, about 300 people from the engineering team have been sacked, while the logistics team’s workforce was cut to 50 per cent since October. 

The report added that in an internal email to employees in October, Byju Raveendran, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) had said, “Byju’s will prioritise rehiring the laid-off employees as it restructures and hires again for ‘newly created relevant roles.”

According to IANS, over 70 Start-ups in India have fired more than 21,000 employees, including unicorns like Byju’s, Ola, MPL, Innovaccer, Unacademy, Vedantu, Cars24, OYO, Meesho, Udaan, and numerous others.