Byju's Cuts Costs, Shifts Employees to Work-From-Home Model

12 Mar 2024 , 09:14 AM

The struggling edtech business Byju’s has closed all of its offices in India, keeping just its headquarters at IBC, Knowledge Park in Bengaluru, as part of a massive cost-cutting move to deal with the impending liquidity problem.

This occurs at a time when the business and its investors are at odds over the legitimacy of the money received from a recently completed rights issue offering.

Following this move, the company has required all employees—aside from those operating out of its headquarters and around 300 Byju’s Tuition Centres across the nation—to work from home for an undetermined period of time.

Additionally, the corporation has withheld a portion of the February salary for roughly 75% of its workforce at this time. Currently, the company employs about 14,000 people in India. After around ten days of delay, Byju’s released the payments and pledged to pay the remaining amount as soon as it was permitted to use the money from the recently closed rights issue.

The decision to close all offices nationwide was reportedly a component of Byju’s India CEO Arjun Mohan’s reorganisation plan, according to people close to the business.

“More than half a year has gone into this project. The insider stated, “The corporation has been closing offices across the nation as soon as each lease expired.

In the past 12 months, the company has let go of thousands of workers as it has struggled with dwindling venture capital funding and a weakening market for online learning services. Members of its investor board have now departed as well, citing disagreements with Raveendran.

Since then, the business has made an effort to address a few of the issues. Ranjan Pai, one of its original investors, contributed funds, established an advisory board comprising industry experts like Mohandas Pai and Rajnish Kumar, and promoted Arjun Mohan to CEO. Talks about selling off assets like Epic and Great Learning are also underway.

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