Byju’s, the world’s most-valued edtech company, has said it would shut operations in Thiruvanthapuram, a move that will impact over 140 employees.
On Tuesday, in a LinkedIn post, TechnoparkToday — a community portal for IT professionals — said Byju’s was planning to stop operations in the city “without any prior notice to employees” and termed the decision a “forceful resignation”. Over the past few days, the employees of Byju’s in Thiruvananthapuram met with Prathidhwani, a welfare association for IT employees, and together they requested Kerala labour minister V Sivankutty to intervene and ask the company to revise its exit policy. Byju’s did not attend the meeting on October 25, the association said.
While Byju’s maintains that about 140 employees are likely to be impacted by this decision, the association said there are more than 170 staffers in Thiruvananthapuram. The startup also said it was providing a “generous and progressive exit package”, but its employees allege that they were informed about their “immediate layoff” over messages and calls, and not formally over emails and there were no talks of any package.
“While we are discontinuing our Trivandrum operations to reduce redundancy, we are also offering the entire Trivandrum team an opportunity to relocate to Bengaluru. We have provided them more than a month’s time to decide on this matter,” a Byju’s spokesperson said. “If they choose to not use this opportunity…(there is) an assured opportunity to be rehired by Byju’s within the next 12 months at any operational centre across India,” the spokesperson added. Vineeth Chandran, secretary, Prathidhwani, told FE: “Most of the employees are from the creative team and since Byju’s has already developed the content, they’re now saying these people are no longer required and are forcing them to resign, almost like a layoff.”
“Byju’s is asking employees to resign by October 25 and will pay them the salary for those days on November 1. It is too short a notice for anyone to find a job. This forceful resignation has caused stress. A lot of the Byju’s employees are slipping into depression because of these hasty decisions,” he added.
Chandran, however, said Byju’s is likely to attend the next meeting slated for October 31 and they were hopeful that the Kerala government, along with Byju’s, will be able to solve the issue. These developments come after Byju’s had said it would “rationalise” and “optimise” its operations to turn profitable by March 2023 and plans to fire about 2,500 employees from the product, content, media, and technology teams in a “phased manner.” The decision to reduce the cash burn comes after the startup reported a loss of over `4,500 crore in financial year (FY) 2021 on the back of a revenue of `2,280 crore, the highest in the space.