Byju’s to fire 2,500 staff; aims for profitability by March 2023

NEW DELHI: Edtech major Byju’s has chalked out a plan to become profitable by March 2023 to optimise its marketing and operational cost, which will lead to retrenchment of 5 per cent employees or about 2,500 people in next six months.

Byju’s co-founder Divya Gokulnath said the company will start focussing on building brand awareness overseas through new partnerships and hire 10,000 teachers for India and overseas business.

“We have designed a path to profitability which we plan to achieve by March 2023. We have built significant brand awareness throughout India and there is scope to optimise marketing budget and prioritise the spends in a way that it creates a global footprint. Second is operational cost and the third is integration of multiple business units,” Gokulnath said. She said the K10 subsidiaries - Meritnation, TutorVista, Scholar and HashLearn - will now be consolidated as one business unit under India business.

Aakash and Great Learning will continue to function as separate organisations. “This (the new plan) will help us enhance efficiency, avoid redundancy. So there will be rationalisation of roles as well. Our hybrid teaching model which is tuition centre and our online teaching model which is Byju’s Classes or our learning app is scaling very well. Especially for our first two products, we plan to hire 10,000 teachers. Our revenues will be on track as per what we are doing,” Gokulnath said.

She said to avoid redundancies and duplication of roles, and by leveraging technology better, around five per cent of Byju’s 50,000 workforce is expected to be rationalised across product, content, media and technology teams.

“Around half of the new hiring will take place in India in the next six months. We will hire in the English and Spanish speaking market. Teachers will be from the US and India. We are also looking at expanding to Latin America,” Gokulnath said.

Byju’s booked a loss of Rs 4,588 crore for fiscal year ended March 31, 2021, 19 times more than the preceding fiscal, as the nation’s most valuable startup on Wednesday released audited financial statements after months of delay.

“Around half of the new hiring will take place in India in the next six months. We will hire in the English and Spanish speaking market. Teachers will be from the US and India. We are also looking at expanding to Latin America,” Gokulnath said.

Byju’s booked a loss of Rs 4,588 crore for fiscal year ended March 31, 2021, 19 times more than the preceding fiscal, as the nation’s most valuable startup on Wednesday released audited financial statements after months of delay.