BYJU'S cuts more than 900 jobs across teams, senior executives asked to step down too

Edtech unicorn BYJU'S has begun a fresh round of layoffs, putting almost 900 plus employees from various teams and functions in jeopardy, as reported by YourStory. Under the condition of anonymity, three people from the organisation said that the layoffs have mostly affected the marketing, design, logistics, and technology departments in India as well as the product teams in the international business.

Another person who spoke to YourStory said that several senior management employees were also asked to step down as part of the tech layoff bandwagon. 

"Folks in the international team were given a heads-up... It's very hush-hush this time. Some of the biggest contributors also have been laid off," said one of these persons. 

The majority of the upper management, according to a senior executive at BYJU'S, is already looking for work elsewhere since they "lost faith in the company" as per the YourStory report. Another source independently corroborated the lack of enthusiasm in the company. 

"Across most of the company, morale in teams is ridiculously low. Most people have one foot out the door, they're trying to land something else. But as you know, the market is pretty bad," said a former employee who was recently laid off after three years at BYJU'S and who spoke to YourStory. 

Also read | BYJU's founders planning to increase stake in the company to 40%: Report

The person continued by saying that top directors and HR staff were present on the video call during which they learned of the layoff.

The reasons given for not sending emails covered the typical ground, including cost-benefit analysis and the failure to generate income from a specific unit. According to the source, email addresses have been disabled, and impacted parties have been given 24 hours to wrap up.

The worst was over for the edtech business, Byju Raveendran said in an interview with Moneycontrol mid-last month on the sidelines of The World Economic Forum in Davos, adding that the company will become profitable by the March or June quarter.

Previously, as part of its cost-cutting measures, BYJU'S terminated about 2,500 employees in October 2022. The founder-CEO Byju Raveendran had said at the time that he would see that laid-off workers were given access to newly established relevant positions and that they would be rehired.

"I have already instructed our HR leaders to make all the newly created relevant roles available to you on an ongoing basis," Raveendran wrote in an email to employees on October 31.

At TechSparks 2022, YourStory's flagship startup-tech event, Raveendran expressed confidence that the business will at least partially recover its losses in the fiscal years 2021–2022.

"Wait for (FY) 2022 numbers to come out; we just finished our best six months," he'd said.