These employees said that they saw colleagues pack up boxes and leave throughout the week, as the Tencent-backed startup slashed another 500-1,000 jobs across teams, as ET reported last Monday.
The employees ET spoke to were not aware of the exits of board members and the company’s auditor. Their major concern was the serial layoffs at the company from late 2022.
“It is extremely disheartening to see my colleagues leave for good each day. I’ve been trying to look for new opportunities, but all this is very stressful’’, one of the employees, who requested anonymity, said.
Three employees told ET that there is no internal communication from the management on what is happening with the business, or investors quitting the board, or delayed financials. One of these employees said that the workload has become more intense as there are far fewer team members to share the work with.
A Byju’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to ET’s query regarding concerns among employees relating to job security and business continuity.
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“The workload has increased significantly. Employees who remain are having to do their own jobs as well as that of those who were laid off,” Atit Danak, partner, innovation strategy practice, at management consultancy firm Zinnov, told ET.
Human resource (HR) consultants who work for startups have seen a spike in resumes from Byju’s, as employees are scrambling for jobs in fear of getting laid off.
Over the last four months, Akanksha Malik, founder of Growth360, which helps startups hire mid-to-senior level people, has been getting at least four resumes from Byju’s for any job opportunity that her firm advertised for.
“Byju’s has created two problems in the talent market. It overpaid without realising that this was not a competitive or realistic salary. And they did not offer people job security,” Malik told ET.
As a result, placing executives from Byju’s has been hard because of over-the-top salary structures, Malik added. Sanam Rawal, founding partner, MetaMorph, an HR consultancy that works with portfolio companies of funds such as Blume Ventures, said the same.
“Employees are finding it very difficult to get the salaries they do at Byju’s. Most of the CVs I have been getting for the last 3-4 months haven’t found any takers, though some of them landed roles in crucial areas like performance marketing. But in areas like sales it has been tough,” Rawal said.
Board resignations, TLB tussle
Late Friday night, Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India), Prosus (earlier Naspers), and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative confirmed their exits from Byju’s’ board. The departures followed the company’s legal tussles with lenders, loan defaults, and the much-delayed filing of its financial results for the year ended March 31, 2022.
Deloitte too resigned as Byju’s’ auditor due to the company’s delay in furnishing the financial statement.
Following Deloitte’s exit, Byju’s appointed BDO (MSKA & Associates) as its statutory auditor for five years from the fiscal year 2021-22.
Byju’s has been negotiating with lenders regarding the repayment of its $1.2 billion term loan B, even as both sides have filed suits against each other. While lenders like Redwood had filed a suit against the edtech company in Delaware, Byju’s had filed a countersuit against the same lender and its entities in New York, accusing them of demanding ‘accelerated repayment’.
Separately, last month, BlackRock, a minority shareholder with less than a 1% stake, wrote down the edtech’s valuation to $8.29 billion, as disclosed in a filing dated March 31, 2023, which was reviewed by ET.
