BYJU’S To Fire 2,500 Employees After Recording 20X Jump In Losses

Edtech giant BYJU’S on Wednesday (October 12) said that it will be laying off around 2,500 employees, constituting 5% of its workforce across product, content, media, and technology teams. 

In a statement, the edtech decacorn, last valued at $23 Bn and backed by Prosus Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and other marquee investors, said that it has taken the drastic step to attain profitability by the end of the ongoing financial year (FY23). 

BYJU’S also said that it is consolidating its K-10 acquired businesses such as Toppr, Meritnation, TutorVista, HashLearn, and Scholar into one business unit. However, Great Learning and Aakash will continue to function separately. 

The edtech platform said it has laid off employees to avoid duplications of roles and leverage more technology.

“As a mature organisation that takes its responsibility towards investors and stakeholders seriously, we aim to ensure sustainable growth alongside strong revenue growth. These measures will help us achieve profitability in the defined time frame of March 2023,” Mrinal Mohit, CEO of BYJU’S India business, said. 

The development comes a few weeks after the company announced its FY21 financials after delaying for almost 12 months. The edtech giant witnessed its loss soar by almost 20X to INR 4,588 Cr in FY21 from INR 231.69 Cr in FY20. 

The startup’s revenue from operations stood at INR 2,428.3 Cr in FY21, a 3.3% drop from INR 2,511 Cr in the previous year. Total expenses rose to INR 7,027.4 Cr in FY21, a 144.5% increase from INR 2,873 Cr in FY20. 

BYJU’S had attributed the loss in FY21 to the high cash burn of WhiteHatJr, which it acquired in 2020 for $300 Mn

While this is the biggest layoffs round in BYJU’S this year, it is not the first one. In June, Inc42 reported that BYJU’S had laid off around 700 employees from WhiteHatJr and Toppr. In the same month, 800 WhiteHatJr employees were forced to resign as the company asked them to work from office. 

The edtech space as a whole has been plagued with layoffs in 2022. The sector was investors’ favourite during the two pandemic years, but has been struggling to raise funds amid the funding winter this year. Edtech startups like Crejo.Fun, Lido and Udayy have shut shop this year. Besides, the edtech sector has seen around 4,000 layoff in 2022 so far. 

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