Edtech unicorn Unacademy has asked 150 employees to leave after a performance improvement plan.
This comes after Unacademy, operated by Sorting Hat Technologies Pvt Ltd, laid off around 600 to 800 employees from its sales and marketing team, along with a few contractual staff and educators or tutors, in April.
However, an Unacademy spokesperson said the latest exercise was not a layoff.
Earlier Inc42 which first reported the development said that the 150 employees impacted worked at PrepLadder.
Chandigarh-based post-graduate medical entrance exam preparation platform PrepLadder was acquired by Unacademy for $50 million in 2020.
“The company is built on a culture of high performance and transparency, and a key aspect of that is the transparency and objectivity of our performance appraisal process.
Based on the outcome of the recent appraisal, a very small fraction of the workforce was put on a performance improvement programme, as is common for any organisation of our size and scale. The departure of these employees is a result of the PIP, which is a standard practice in all organizations,” the Unacademy spokesperson said.
“The company has in good faith ensured they receive generous severance and support. We wish all of them the best of luck and thank them for all their efforts at Unacademy,” the spokesperson added.
In March, Unacademy had let go over 100 employees from its PrepLadder team amid “restructuring” of the organization.
In April, Unacademy laid off nearly 600 employees comprising nearly 10% of its workforce, VCCircle reported.
Unacademy is currently valued at $3.44 billion and counts global venture capital (VC) firms, including Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management and SoftBank, among others, as its backers.
Last week, Unacademy has forayed into the offline learning space by rolling out its two coaching centres in Kota. Most of the edtech players are now building their offline presence across India amid a slowing down in the sector after two years of hypergrowth as Covid-19 curbs have eased and students started returning to physical classes.
