Edtech Brainly Partially Shuts India Operation, Lays Off ~72% Indian Team

Adding another bad news to the country’s struggling edtech sector, now Poland-based edtech startup Brainly has partially shut down its India operations and fired nearly all of its team in the country.

According to the Corporate Chat India Twitter account, which quoted an Indian employee’s woes, Brainly CEO Michał Borkowski got over a call and announced the layoffs and operations’ shutdown in the country. 

Following this, the Slack, emails and other workplace access of employees were revoked and Brainly India employees were given the pink slip without any severance. The person added that the company laid off several employees globally but only Indian operations were completely affected.

Contrary to this, a company spokesperson told Inc42 that the company has offered departure packages to all 25 affected employees. The knowledge-sharing community’s Indian team had 35 employees.

“Those were the roles within the Brainly India team focussed on developing paid plans. We deeply value the contribution of every employee and always ensure that those affected are supported in every way possible in making a smooth transition,” the spokesperson said.

The remaining employees will work on the new goals, including growing the community of learners and focussing on the user experience. For now, Brainly won’t be offering paid premium plans to users of Brainly.in and its entire community will continue to use Brainly for free, the company has announced, adding that no global layoffs have occurred.

“This is unrelated to our global business and no other market has been affected by these changes,” the person added.

The Polish startup’s layoff in India has affected departments including customer support, product and marketing and technical divisions while a couple of employees from the legal, human resources and finance departments have been reportedly retained.

In 2022 alone, edtech startups have cumulatively laid off over 7,000 employees. According to Inc42 estimates, as many as 12 edtech startups have laid off anywhere between 3% to 100% of their workforce. 

Among edtech startups leading the top gun are BYJU’S, Unacademy, Vedantu, FrontRow and more. The fallout of edtech also saw operations of startups including Lido Learning, Crejo.Fun, Udayy and SuperLearn being shut down.