Unacademy-owned Relevel will lay off another 40 employees, or roughly 20% of its workforce, as the job guarantee programme vertical pivots from its core education business to test product app NextLevel, which was launched earlier in the day.
"Relevel will be completely shifting its focus from the education business in the upcoming months to focus completely on its tests product and the newly launched App called NextLevel," Gaurav Munjal, co-founder and CEO of Unacademy told employees in an internal note on January 10.
"Almost 80 percent of Relevel’s remaining team will be absorbed by other businesses of Unacademy Group and we will have to let go of around 20 (around 40 people) of the team because of lack of availability of roles for them," Munjal added.
The latest round of layoffs and Relevel's move to shut down its core business further highlights the predicament of the job guarantee vertical, which was struggling since August last year. Moneycontol had then reported that Relevel had halved its team. Moreover, in September, Moneycontrol also reported how the job guarantee platform was struggling to get candidates placed as companies were going on a hiring freeze amid a global economic downturn.
Munjal said that the laid-off employees will receive the same benefits as the approximately 350 employees who were let go in November.
Severance pay equivalent to the notice period and an additional two months, accelerated vesting, medical insurance and placement support will be provided by the company to the laid-off employees, Munjal said.
"Our Outplacements teams helped more than 60 percent of the exited employees get placed in the last two months," he added.
Moneycontrol has viewed a copy of the note sent by Munjal. Unacademy did not comment on the matter.
With the latest round of layoffs, Unacademy has sacked more than 1,200 employees since the start of 2021. Moreover, it halved its team from over 6,000 employees as of April last year to about 3,000 employees currently.
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