NEW DELHI: In a bid to achieve profitability by March 2023, edtech major Byju’s has planned to retrench 2,500, or 5% of its employees, in the next six months. The company in a statement on Wednesday said that to avoid redundancies and duplication of roles, around 5% of its 50,000-strong workforce is expected to be rationalised across product, content, media, and technology teams in a phased manner.
“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, Byju’s India business, said.
Over the last three years, Byju’s has acquired multiple companies such as Toppr, Meritnation, TutorVista, Scholar, and HashLearn. According to the edtech major, these companies will now be consolidated as one business unit, leaving many of its workforces redundant. Its other acquisitions -- Aakash and Great Learning -- will continue to function as separate organisations.
Apart from workforce rationalisation, the company also hinted at cutting its India marketing cost. “Since significant brand awareness has been created in India over the past few years, there is a scope to optimise marketing budgets locally and prioritise spending to increase brand awareness in overseas markets,” said the company in the statement.
Byju’s reported a loss of Rs 4,588 crore in 2020-2021 compared to Rs 232 crore in 2019-20. Revenues also recorded a drop in FY21 to Rs 2,428 crore from Rs 2,511 crore in FY20. The company is also planning to focus more on inside sales calls, email, video calling to reduce operational costs.
However, the company has said that at a group level, it will continue to hire and end this financial year as a net hirer. It plans to hire a total of 10,000 more teachers in the coming year, adding to its current strength of 20,000 teachers. “These steps are also meant to prepare the path towards a stellar listing eventually as the world’s largest EdTech company that has turned profitable, eventually,” Byju’s has said in the statement.
