An Indian multinational educational technology company, Byju’s is firing staff at its Bengaluru headquarters according to the Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union (KITU).
According to KITU Secretary Sooraj Nidiyanga, the company management has asked their employees to either voluntarily resign or face termination.
Byju’s HR team is forcing its employees to resign. The company’s HR division is asking its employees for voluntary resignations since the previous week.
Secretary Sooraj Nidiyanga has also added that the company has not made any written announcements about layoffs.
The company earlier reported that it is laying off nearly 5 percent of the workforce or 2,500 employees of its 50,000 employees. However, BYJU’s also claimed to have plans to hire about 10,000 more teachers in the coming year. This will be an addition to its current strength of 20,000 teachers.
“This (the new plan) will help us enhance efficiency, and avoid redundancy. So there will be rationalisation of roles as well. Our hybrid teaching model which is the 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.
The company has been in the headlines post-Byju’s employees met V Sivankutty, Kerala labour minister alleging that the edtech giant is forcing more than 170 staffers to resign.
Byju’s is looking forward to discontinuing its operations and will be closing its office in Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala). However, the company provides affected employees with relocation opportunities in Bengaluru.
A spokesperson for Byju’s said, “We are also offering the entire Trivandrum team an opportunity to relocate to Bengaluru. We have provided them more than a month’s time to decide on this matter.”
“If they choose to not use this opportunity, we have made available a generous and progressive exit package to all employees impacted by the restructuring, including extended health insurance benefits, outplacement services, and garden leave”, the spokesperson added.
