Byju's gives up almost all office spaces, asks employees to work from home
The edtech firm made it mandatory for all its employees to work from home indefinitely barring those working at nearly 300 tuition centres
Beleaguered edtech major Byju's has given up all its offices across the country, retaining only its headquarters at Bengaluru's Knowledge Park, in what is seen as a major cost-cutting move to address the imminent liquidity crisis.
The edtech firm on Monday (March 11) made it mandatory for all its employees to work from home indefinitely barring those working at nearly 300 Byju's Tuition Centres across India, Moneycontrol reported.
The decision comes at a time when the company has been engaged in a dispute with its investors regarding the validity of the funds raised from a recently concluded rights issue offering.
Restructuring plan
According to sources close to the company, the decision to shut down all offices in the country was a part of the Byju's India CEO Arjun Mohan's restructuring plan. “This has been in works for over six months. The company has been shutting down offices across country as soon as the lease for each expired,” CapTable reported citing people in the know.
Notably, the company has been struggling to pay salaries to its employees. As per media reports, Byju’s has held back part of February salaries for about 75% of its employees. The company currently has close to 14,000 employees in India.
Byju's on Sunday announced that it has disbursed a part of the pending salaries for all employees for the month of February. The edtech firm also promised that it will pay the balance once it is able to use the funds from the rights issue. The issues with timely payment of salaries to Byju's employees can be attributed to the funds raised through the $200 million rights issue being locked in a separate account due to the management's ongoing feud with the investors.
Battling woes
The company has laid off thousands of employees over the last one year or so as it struggled to overcome double blow of drying venture capital funding and slowing demand for online learning services. Since then, its investor board members have left too, citing differences with Raveendran.
The company has tried to fix some of the problems since then. Its early investor Ranjan Pai ploughed in the capital, it set up an advisory council with veterans such as Mohandas Pai and Rajnish Kumar and elevated Arjun Mohan as CEO. It is also in talks to divest assets such as Great Learning and Epic.