Won’t allow educators leaving just for money to come back: Bodhi Tree-backed Allen’s founder

The Maheshwari family.

In a video shared internally with employees, Brajesh Maheshwari, co-founder, Allen Institutes said that the education company will not allow educators to come back to Allen, who are leaving one of India’s oldest test preparation institutes, just for money.

“Many people have come, taught, taught well and have left. Many have also come back and Allen has always welcomed them wholeheartedly,,” said Maheshwari to employees in Hindi.

“But this greed for money is rising and Allen will not allow anyone to come back who is leaving because of this greed. Allen will strictly blacklist all those who are leaving  and they should better understand that they will never be allowed to come back to Allen ever,” Maheshwari added.

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Maheshwari’s comments come at a time when SoftBank-backed edtech unicorn Unacademy is opening its offline centre in Kota. In May, Unacademy had announced its forays into offline tuition centres. The company plans to open more than 15 centres in the next 30 days across nine cities, including one in Kota, and thus, its hiring for educators will go up.

Unacademy declined to comment for the story.

“This is an internal video addressed to our people. We are just alerting them and telling them that don’t leave before completing assignments. It should not be seen with any connotation. Some edtech firms may be offering (lucrative offers) to some of our staff…but we have grown as one Allen family and have kept the welfare of all in mind,” Naveen Maheshwari, one of the four brothers and a director at Allen Career Institute told Moneycontrol.

“We all know the current condition of edtech firms and they are perhaps trying to poach some people from an established brand like us. We have backups but we are just alerting internally. This video is also telling that people will be rewarded in terms of finance and position at Allen,” Maheshwari added.

Unacademy is known to poach educators by offering them huge compensation. Moneycontrol had reported how the SoftBank-backed edtech company tried poaching unicorn PhysicsWallah’s Alakh Pandey by offering him Rs 40 crore a year, in a bid to cull competition. Industry sources said that Unacademy has also poached teachers from other edtech unicorns including Vedantu. 

The Maheshwaris, on the other hand, have a monopoly in the test-preparation segment, especially in Kota, a small town in Rajasthan, famous for housing many IIT-JEE test preparation education centres. In a YouTube video a few years back, Rajesh Maheshwari, the oldest of the four Maheshwari brothers, had claimed himself to be 'Don of the coaching industry.'   

On May 1, the James Murdoch and Uday Shankar-led platform Bodhi Tree Systems announced it was taking an undisclosed stake in Allen Career Institute in a $600 million deal that is expected to close within three months following regulatory approval.