Byju's to aim for profit with 2,500 job cuts by March 2023

Edtech startup Byju's is expected to lay off 2,500 employees—around 5% of its 50,000-strong workforce—as it looks to achieve profitability by March 2023.

To avoid redundancies and duplication of roles, around 5% of Byju's workforce is expected to be rationalised across product, content, media, and technology teams in a phased manner, the decacorn says in a statement.

"As a mature organisation that takes its responsibility towards investors and stakeholders seriously, we aim to ensure sustainable growth alongside strong revenue growth. These measures will help us achieve profitability in the defined time frame of March 2023," says Mrinal Mohit, chief executive officer of Byju's India business.

Over the last three years, Byju's has acquired multiple companies whose integration with its core business is now complete.

Byju's India K-10 business, which includes Toppr, Meritnation, TutorVista, Scholar, and HashLearn, will now be consolidated as one business unit, other than Aakash and Great Learning which will continue to function as separate organisations.

The edtech company, however, says it will continue to hire across all levels and will end this financial year as a net hirer. Byju's plans to hire a total of 10,000 more teachers in the coming year, adding to its current strength of 20,000 teachers. To fuel its growth, the company is expanding its teams along with hiring senior leadership to further build operational strength.

There will also be retargeting of the marketing budget towards more efficient growth, says Byju's. Since significant brand awareness has been created in India over the past few years, there is a scope to optimise marketing budgets locally and prioritise spending to increase brand awareness in overseas markets, it adds.

Byju's is also reinventing its sales model to focus more on inside sales, using video calling platforms which in turn will enhance customer experience and reduce operational costs. "Multiple inside sales hubs will now be created across India from where Byju's sales associates will reach out to incoming leads through calls, email, and Zoom meetings. Inside sales will lead to higher customer satisfaction and lower costs," the company claims.

These moves are expected to result in sizable savings with no impact on growth, according to India's most valued startup. "None of these measures will have any impact on our revenue run rate," says Mohit.

The company says these steps are also meant to prepare the path towards a listing.

Think & Learn Pvt Ltd, the parent company of the edtech giant, reported a loss of ₹4,588.75 crore for the financial year ended March 31, 2021 compared with ₹262 crore in the previous fiscal. The company's revenue for the fiscal year 2020-21 stood at ₹2,428 crore, as compared to ₹2,381 crore during the previous fiscal year. Byju's had claimed that the rationalised growth between FY21 and FY20 is a result of the changes made in the way the company recognises its revenue.