On sacking 2,500 staffers, Byju’s says it is only ‘optimising’ its teams

Edtech company Byju’s is believed to have laid off 2,500 employees, but the company management says it wasn’t an exercise in sacking people. To quote from a press statement issued by Byju’s on Thursday, the company is “optimising” its teams across group of companies.

Notably, Toppr, a Byju’s firm, laid off 1,100 staff members or about 36 per cent of its workforce from the company earlier this week, as claimed by its employees.

Byju’s, however, says the “optimising exercise” involves not more than 500 employees across groups.

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“We strongly deny the misinformation presented by Moneycontrol. To recalibrate our business priorities and accelerate our long-term growth, we are optimizing our teams across our group companies. This entire exercise involves less than 500 employees from across Byju’s group companies,” a company spokesperson said.

Earlier, a media report had claimed that Byju’s has sacked 2,500 of its employees. As per the report, on June 27 and June 28, Byju’s laid off over 1,500 employees from Toppr and WhiteHat Jr, the two companies it acquired over the last two years. A day later, the company sent out e-mails to nearly 1,000 employees from its core operations teams.

Another media report stated that Byju’s was not paying salaries in time to give shape to a $1 billion acquisition deal finalised last year.

It is widely believed that Byju’s is on a cost cutting spree as it looks to rearrange its offerings in the wake of schools reopening and demand for online education cooling down.

PTI quoted Toppr’s sacked employees saying that they got a call from the company on Monday and were asked to resign, failing which they will be terminated without any notice period.

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“I am part of the Chemistry subject matter expert. My entire team has been laid off. Toppr has promised 1 month salary for those who resign and no salary for those who don’t,” a Toppr employee, who did not wish to be named, told PTI.

Byju’s acquired Toppr for about USD 150 million in July last year. Another employee, who has been laid off by Toppr, said that earlier this year everyone was assured by the top management, including Hayath, that there is a high growth opportunity for the employees in the company.

“However, we have been getting some indication about low business after offline classes resumed across the country. I have worked at Whitehat Jr also. Online education is unable to match offline class,” the employee said.

The development comes after another Byju’s group firm Whitehat Jr has laid off 300 employees. Edtech firms Unacademy, Vedantu, Lido, Frontrow, Lido etc have cumulatively laid off over thousands of people this year.