BYJU'S fires over 1,000 employees after promising no more layoffs
BYJU'S, the world's most valuable edtech company, has been struggling due to slow revenue growth and scarcity of funding. The company has now decided to slash over 1,000 jobs as part of a new cost-cutting initiative. In October last year, BYJU'S axed 2,500 staffers, or 5% of its workforce. The new round of layoffs will be in addition to that.
Why does this story matter?
BYJU'S push for making the company profitable has resulted in another round of layoffs. It seems that the company has decided to stick to its secretive ways of letting people go this time as well. The nature of this round of layoffs poses more questions about the company's financial health. For all we know, more employees may be fired after this round.
Engineering teams are the worst hit
BYJU'S has axed up to 1,200 employees this time. The departments hit by the decision include engineering, logistics, marketing, sales, and communications. Per Business Today, 15% of all engineering teams have been fired by the edtech giant. After the last round of layoffs, the company's co-founder and CEO Byju Raveendran had assured employees that they won't fire more employees anytime soon.
Employees were not sent emails about being axed
In an email to employees in October, Raveendran apologized to the fired employees and asked them for forgiveness if the process wasn't smooth. One would hope that the process was smooth this time. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. To prevent the information from leaking, the company did not send any emails to fired employees. Instead, they were asked to join a Google Meet call.
The company is pushing axed employees to resign
Ex-employees have accused BYJU'S of making layoffs look like voluntary resignations. The same accusation has been leveled against the company this time as well. According to multiple fired employees, the company's HR executives pushed employees to resign, claiming being laid off would not look good on the employee's CV. The company is reportedly not offering a severance package to axed staff, either.
BYJU's has been on an aggressive push to cut costs
The year 2022 was a tumultuous year for BYJU'S. Per the company's FY21 results, its losses jumped 19.8 times to Rs. 4,588 core, the most for an Indian start-up that year. The edtech giant has been on an aggressive cost-cutting quest to achieve profitability. According to Raveendran, BYJU'S aims to achieve profitability "by the end of this quarter or early next quarter."
