Byju's laid off employees over Google Meet: sources

Byju's founder Byju Raveendran had reassured employees in multiple internal emails that the company would not be laying off anyone after the October job cuts.

Ed-tech firm Byju’s carried out its second round of layoffs in less than six months, cutting 1,000 to 1,200 more jobs across several teams. Employees in the engineering, sales, logistics, marketing and communications teams at Byju’s have lost their jobs, at least three people familiar with the matter told Moneycontrol on February 2.

Employees were laid off over Google Meet calls, sources said. None of the employees were told about the layoffs over e-mail, as e-mails tend to get leaked, sources said. So, Byju’s asked employees over normal and WhatsaApp calls to join a call over Google Meet and were informed about the layoffs there, sources said.

From the engineering team, about 300 employees have been sacked, while the logistics team’s strength has come down to 50 per cent since October, sources said. Another source said that Byju’s has been outsourcing logistics and so the company has reduced its in-house logistics team size by 50 percent.

Byju Raveendran, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Byju’s, had reassured employees in multiple internal emails that the company would not be laying off anyone since it cut 5 per cent of its staff or about 2,500 employees last October.

In an internal email to employees in October, Raveendran said, “Byju’s will prioritise rehiring the laid-off employees as it restructures and hires again for ‘newly created relevant roles.”

Tens of thousands of people across the world have lost their jobs in the past few months as global technology giants are on a layoff spree globally. Google, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Meta, Twitter, Stripe, Lyft, Affirm and CloudKitchens are among companies that have sacked employees recently or frozen hiring in the face of sluggish consumer spending, higher interest rates and surging inflation worldwide.