BYJU’s-owned WhiteHat Jr Fires 300 Employees, Plans To Downsize Staff Strength For Cost Cutting

WhiteHat Jr has taken the step after over 800 employees tendered their resignations in May when they were asked to return to offices post-COVID pandemic.

New Delhi: Edtech start-up WhiteHat Jr, owned by Byju’s, has fired around 300 employees globally as the industry witnesses restructuring and cost-cutting. The present round of downsizing staff has affected thousands of employees both in India and other countries, where the code-teaching platform runs operations.

The move from WhiteHat Jr was taken after over 800 employees tendered their resignations in May, sources in the know told MoneyControl. This move from the edtech platform comes at the back of mass layoffs, restructuring, and shutdowns in the edtech sector.

After a year of aggressive hiring and high employee cost, WhiteHatJr has become the latest to join the fray of start-ups to lay off employees in large numbers. Prior to this, Inc42 was the first to report the layoffs.

The employees in WhiteHat Jr who have been asked to leave the firm across Brazil and India could be as much as 600.

“To realign with our business priorities, we are optimizing our team to accelerate results and best position the business for long-term growth. WhiteHat Jr continues to put students first and invest in building a high-quality teacher’s network,” a Byju’s spokesperson told MoneyControl.

As per the report, the downsizing exercise started at WhiteHat Jr a week ago and the workforce reduction is likely to have been carried out across verticals including sales, marketing, tutors and operations among others.

In March and April this year, over 800 employees of WhiteHat Jr had resigned after being asked to ‘work from office’.

Notably, WhiteHat Jr is owned by Byju’s, which has acquired the startup firm for $300 million in 2020.

In a company-wide email, the startup had on 18 March 2022 asked the remote working employees to return to their respective office locations within a month’s time. Moreover the sales, coding and math teams were also asked to work from Gurugram, Mumbai and Bengaluru offices, respectively. This move led to en masse resignations.

It was reported that more than 800 full-time employees across the company, including from sales, coding, and math teams, voluntarily resigned from the startup as they didn’t want to relocate to their respective office locations.

“As part of our back-to-work drive, most of our Sales and Support employees have been asked to report to Gurgaon and Mumbai offices from April 18. We have made exceptions for medical and personal exigencies and have offered relocation assistance as required. Our teachers will continue to work from home,” WhiteHat Jr had said in a statement.

It also needs to be mentioned that WhiteHat Jr has been running on losses for long time now. The start-up posted a total loss of Rs 1,690 crore in FY21 and between 1 April, 2020 and 31 March, 2021, the start-up has earned only Rs 483.9 crore from its operations, while posting a total expense of Rs 2,175.2 crore.