Byju's cuts 600 jobs across Toppr and WhiteHat Jr as Indian edtech space shrinks

As the Indian edtech space continues to shrink considerably, online learning giant Byju's laid off at least 600 jobs - 300 from its Toppr learning platform and another 300 at coding platform WhiteHat Jr.

For the layoff at Toppr, which Byju's acquired last year for $150 million, the edtech giant confirmed the development, saying it has completed "the integration of Toppr, and has absorbed almost 80% of its talented workforce into the Byju's ecosystem".

After the acquisition was completed, Toppr's employees from the sales and marketing division were retained while others were asked to go.


The company spokesperson said as the next step, "we [Byju's] are optimising teams to recalibrate business priorities and accelerate long-term growth".

Earlier, online coding provider WhiteHat Jr, another subsidiary of Byju's that it acquired for $300 million, laid off around 300 employees. In April-May more than 1,000 of its employees resigned after being asked to return to office.

This time, most of the fired employees belonged to the teams of code-teaching and sales, and some of them worked in Brazil.

In a statement, the company said: "To realign with our business priorities, we are optimising our team to accelerate results and best position the business for long-term growth."

The layoffs at Byju's comes amid reports that it delayed payments as part of its $1-billion acquisition of Aakash Educational Services in 2021. The company responded by saying the acquisition process "was on track and expected to be completed by August".

"Aakash is our most successful acquisition till date and we are very proud to have them in our fold," the spokesperson said. "Along with all our group companies, we continue to be perfectly poised to provide access to quality education in all learning segments - from early learning to exam prep and career success."

Aakash Educational Services provides test preparation services for medical and engineering entrance exams, school/board exams, and other exams via Aakash Centres.

The edtech unicorn made at least 10 acquisitions for a cumulative transaction value of about $2.5 billion last year.

More than 10,000 employees have been laid off by edtech startups such as Unacademy, WhiteHat Jr, Vedantu, FrontRow, Udayy, Lido Learning and others. as the sector has been reeling under the global macroeconomic conditions coupled with reopening of schools, colleges and physical tuition centres.