In a fresh round of layoffs, troubled edtech major Byju’s has sacked around 600 employees from the content and marketing teams. Sources said that the layoffs took place last month as part of its ongoing restructuring exercise.
However, when contacted a company spokesperson said that only 60 employees have been laid off.
The latest round of layoffs has impacted the content and video team more than the marketing team as the former division was shut entirely, sources said. Teachers and educators who were part of the content production team were also impacted by the move.
The latest round layoffs are part of the retrenchment exercise being carried out under the leadership of Byju’s new India CEO Arjun Mohan. After taking over last month, he had said that a restructuring exercise would impact 4,000 employees at the firm.
The layoffs also came after the company’s marketing head Atit Mehta, content head Asheesh Sharma, and heads of other verticals exited the company.
On November 4, after a delay of around 19 months Byju’s announced its partial earnings for FY22, which included its core business, meaning that the same did not include Aakash Educational Services, WhitehatJr and other acquisitions.
On a standalone basis, the company narrowed its operational losses to Rs 2,253 crore from Rs 2,406 crore in the previous fiscal. Revenue increased 2.3 times to Rs 3,569 crore. The company said that it will file the consolidated numbers with the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) in three weeks’ time.
Byju’s is also in an advanced stage of talks to sell its California-based reading platform, Epic for around $400 million to Joffre Capital. It is also in talks with mobile learning platform, Duolingo and a couple of other players.
Byju’s needs to raise around $800 million to $1 billion to repay the $1.2 billion term loan B, industry sources said. The company is also in talks with Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to raise fresh capital.