Edtech decacorn Byju’s has asked around 500 employees to resign from its subsidiaries Toppr and Whitehat Jr as it looks at ways to reduce costs and streamline the process of integrating various units, the company said.
A spokesperson for Byju’s said that less than 500 employees were impacted across Byju's Toppr and Whitehat Jr, adding that, layoffs at Toppr were part of the integration process following its acquisition of the business last year.
A person familiar with the development said that 300 Topper employees had been impacted.
“Byju’s has completed the integration of Toppr and has absorbed almost 80% of its talented workforce into its ecosystem. As the next step, we are optimizing teams to recalibrate business priorities and accelerate our long-term growth,” the spokesperson said.
Atleast 300 Whitehat Jr employees had been impacted in the layoffs, VCCircle reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the development.
It said it was “optimizing the team” at Whitehat Jr to “realign” with its business priorities.
The trimming of the workforce comes at a time when the online-education provider has sought a delay in payments for the $1 billion acquisition of brick-and-mortar test prep leader Aakash Educational Services in April 2021.
Byju’s had acquired test prep platform Toppr for around $150 million in July 2021 in a combination of cash and stock. Toppr offers products for K-12 students including exam preparation app, Answr and code-learning product, Codr.
It acquired Whitehat Jr for $350 million in 2020. White Hat Jr also offers coding programmes for K-12 students.
Byju’s is among several Indian startups who have laid off close to 11,000 employees so far. The edtech industry, which boomed during covid-19 as teaching moved online, is now starting to struggle following the abatement of the pandemic and reopening of educational institutions.
A liquidity crunch in the startup ecosystem, shrinking valuations and rising costs are forcing startups to focus on conserving costs.
In April, edtech unicorn Unacademy fired a tenth of its 6,000-strong workforce, adding to the firing of 325 part-time employees at the start of the year. And in May, online tutoring platform Vedantu laid off 200 employees.
In February, startup Mumbai-based Lido Learning shut shop after letting go 900-1,200 employees on a “virtual Zoom townhall”.
Between March and May, Whitehat Jr’s 800 employees had also offered to resign after the company announced a “back to work” drive.
Besides edtech, the broader startup ecosystem has also suffered large layoffs with companies like Frontrow, Meesho, Citymall, Mobile Premier League, Cars24, Mfine, Furlenco and Trell firing employees over the past few months.
