Ed-tech firm Byju’s laid off 1,000 to 1,200 more employees in its second round of layoffs in the last few months amid mass job cuts across major tech companies globally.
An IIT graduate working in Bengaluru was among those affected by the latest layoffs at Byju’s. He had joined Byju’s as a software engineer in June 2022, right after college. Describing his first job, he said it was a “great journey here for me, full of learning and growth”.
“Just keeping in mind ‘Jo hota hai aache ke liye hi hota hai (whatever happens, happens for good)’ and moving on in life to look at what it holds for me and looking for new challenges,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post as he sought new job opportunities.”
The mechanical engineering graduate from IIT-Ropar in Punjab describes himself as someone willing to work and learn in a competitive environment and get hands-on experience in programming.
Byju’s, the world's most-valued edtech company, is laying off people from the engineering, sales, logistics, marketing and communications teams, at least three people familiar with the matter told Moneycontrol on February 2.
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 per cent.
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.”
None of the employees were told about the layoffs over mail, as emails tend to get leaked, sources said. Byju's rather told employees over normal and WhatsApp calls to join a call over Google Meet and were informed about the layoffs there, sources said.
