Byju’s Tvm Technopark office shut, employees allege they are being forced to resign

An office of edtech unicorn Byju’s that functioned out of the Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram has been closed down. More than 170 employees who were working in the branch met state Labour Minister V Sivankutty on Tuesday, October 25 seeking compensation and pending salaries.

“The employees of Byju’s app from Technopark Thiruvananthapuram had come to see me. The employees have many grievances, including job loss. The Labour Department will conduct a serious investigation in this regard,” Minister Sivankutty posted on his Facebook page.

Technopark Today, the community media platform of Technopark employees, posted on their social media pages that the Byju’s management was forcing employees to resign. With the help of Prathidwani, an employee welfare organisation for Technopark employees, the employees are demanding “payment of the salary for October 2022 on November 1, 2022, one-time settlement of  salary for the upcoming three months, from November 2022 to January 31, 2023, as well as earned leave encashment and full settlement of variable pay (as applicable to each employee) from the management.”

Byju’s is currently worth $22 billion. Its losses were marked at Rs 4,588 crore in the financial year 2021. This was almost 20 times more than the Rs 232 crore loss in the financial year 2020. Its auditing firm Deloitte raised multiple concerns on the company’s accounts. This caused the filing of the audited results to be delayed by 18 months.

At present, Byju’s has about 50,000 employees. The company is expected to lay off 5%, i.e., 2,500 people in a phased manner to rationalise its workforce, in order to be profitable by FY 23.

There have also been many allegations against the company’s work ethics. In 2021, the BBC had reported that behind the meteoric rise of Byju’s lies customer disputes related to refunds and deficiency of services, parents being pushed into debt burden, and unsatisfied employees who were bullied with aggressive targets. The BBC reported that the company’s sales tactics included “incessant cold calls and sales pitches whose effect was to convince them that their child will be left behind if they don’t buy a Byju’s product”. Aggrieved parents alleged that they were misled by sales agents, who were “least bothered” about refunds once the sale was concluded.

Founded by Byju Raveendran in 2011, the world’s highest-valued edtech startup is funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and major private equity firms such as Tiger Global and General Atlantic.