BYJU’S Slashes Salaries For New Sales Hires By More Than 90%

Cash-strapped BYJU’S has reduced the fixed pay for new sales hires by a massive 90%, multiple sources said, after linking salaries of sales staff to their performance last month. 

Inc42 has reviewed offer letters offered to various inside sales associates in the past few weeks and the overall compensation being offered to inside sales associates is INR 4 Lakh per annum, which includes variable pay. The offer letters show fixed pay of INR 1.15 Lakh per annum, and variable pay (performance-linked) as a maximum of INR 2.8 Lakh per year. 

This effectively means that the in-hand salary of inside sales associates every month will be close to INR 10,000, compared to INR 35,000-INR 40,000 for the same profile till December 2023. 

BYJU’S has several openings for inside sales associates on its website, where it mentions the annual gross salary as INR 4 Lakhs, but this does not clearly state that the bulk of the salary is dependent on sales performance. 

In comparison, just six months ago, the Inside Sales Associate job postings on platforms such as LinkedIn mentioned annual compensation of INR 7 Lakhs, with INR 4 Lakh as fixed pay. Essentially both fixed and performance-linked variables have been reduced in the new offer letters.

When it comes to Business Development Associates (BDAs), BYJU’S has reduced the annual gross salary from INR 10 Lakh in late 2023 to INR 7 Lakh now. This includes INR 4 Lakhs per year as fixed pay and the rest as variables. as per the company website.

BYJU’S Goes Heavy On Cost-Cutting

The changes in the hiring budgets come amid the edtech giant’s push to get leaner under the BYJU’S 3.0 programme as we reported earlier. As part of this, last month, cofounder and CEO Byju Raveendran told 1,500 sales associates and managers that the company is moving to a performance-linked salary model under which monthly pay-outs would be linked to the sales brought in. The CEO also hinted that this could become the new way forward for the BYJU’S sales team, instead of a short experiment for May. 

In line with this, the company is said to have paid the May 2024 salaries of sales employees from the revenue collections it made in the month. 

However, BYJU’S still has salary and last due obligations for thousands of its former and current employees. This includes those who were let go in February and March 2024, as well as PF contributions for some of these employees for the months prior to their dismissals. 

BYJU’S had earlier claimed that it expects to clear all PF dues by June, but thus far, there has been no progress on that front. 

It remains to be seen whether the company continues its performance-linked pay system for June and the months ahead. Even though going by the annual pay offered to new hires, that seems to be the case. 

The company did not respond to Inc42’s questions on the new pay scale for sales hires. The story will be updated if and when the company responds. 

Besides cost cutting, BYJU’S is looking to push its sales numbers by lowering the prices of its courses. Sources further added that across the board there has been a 30-40% drop in pricing under this change.

It has significantly slashed the prices of various products including the BYJU’S Learning app subscriptions, tuition fees for BYJU’S Tuition Centres as well as the fees for online courses. 

BYJU’S has also integrated the educators team for online classes and BYJU’S Tuition Centre verticals. It has also hired educators at lesser salaries who now teach in a hybrid mode, as we reported in late April. 

Meanwhile, the company is still stuck in a legal tangle with its investors, vendors, and lenders. Raveendran, who is currently in the UAE (as per speculations), has shown a lot of optimism about turning things around, but the state of hiring and the low budgets paint a grim picture of austerity at BYJU’S. 

Harpreet Singh Saluja, president of the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate or NITES, told Inc42 that BYJU’S new salary structure is a glaring example of capitalism gone wrong. He added that a fixed salary of INR 1.15 Lakhs is simply not enough to live on in many Indian cities. 

“With low salaries and uncertainty around bonuses, employees are in a tough spot financially. This race to the bottom in pay hurts everyone. It discourages talented people from working in such firms and pushes them to look for jobs in other countries. The government needs to take stricter measures to ensure companies adhere to minimum wage guidelines and offer fair compensation to workers,” Saluja added.

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