Daybreak - What happens to Byju's employees after they're laid off?

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Lat week, the struggling edtech giant Byju's laid off another 500 of its employees. This came along with a salary delay of three consecutive months. In his email to employees two months ago, Raveendran had written, “I have been moving mountains for months to make payroll, and this time, the struggle was even bigger to ensure that you receive what you rightfully deserve."With the latest round of layoffs though, the employee count at Byju’s has gone down from 15000 at the end of last year to around 13,000 now. This is the same company whose founder would boast about how Byju's was the largest startup employer in the country with a headcount of 55,000. The Ken had investigated what all of this means for Byju’s employees last year and we understood how they got the worst end of the stick. They told us they had been fired arbitrarily without any notice. In fact, some were being forced to resign.Even this time, according to reports by The Economic Times, they were laid off without any notice. And like that wasn't enough, we also learnt companies have specifically been telling recruiters to avoid hiring Byju’s employees.Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too? It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Ramon Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

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I have been moving mountains for months to make payroll and this time the struggle was even bigger to ensure that you receive what you rightfully deserve. These are words from Baiju Ravindran's email to his employees in February this year. But two months later in April, Baju's employees saw their salaries delayed again for the third consecutive month. The email informing them of the latest delay began with,

we are writing to you today with a heavy heart, but with a message of hope and reassurance. But again, these words too rang hollow because 500 employees were laid off last week. Now, we all know that Bajus is neck deep in trouble, and it started a while ago. 1500 staffers have quit the company over the last few months because of this ongoing crisis. And with the latest round of layoffs, the employee count at Bayju's is at around 13,000. At the end of last year, 2023, it was 15,000. This is the same company whose founder would boast about how his company was the largest startup employal in the country with a headcount of 55,000.

The ken had actually investigated what all of this means for Baiju's employees last year, and we understood how they got the worst end of the stick. They told us that they had been fired arbitrarily without any notice period. In fact, some of them were being forced to resign. Even this time, according to reports by the Economic Times, they were laid off without any notice. Like this wasn't enough, we also learned that companies have specific, specifically told recruiters to avoid hiring Bayju's employees. Why?

Because they are concerned about their work ethics. Now, this is quite alarming because more and more Bayju's employees are out in the job market actively looking to get hired. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Nidda Sharma, and I Don't Chase the News Cycle. Instead, thrice a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Monday, the 8th of April.

Imagine getting an email with a blank subject line from your HR. In the current job scenario and, well, economic conditions, it sounds like a nightmare, right? This is exactly what happened to A Kangshah Khemka from Kolkata who was working as a biology tutor at Baiju's. So she got the dreaded email, joined the meeting link email by the HR department. earlier in that day, and there it was. The company representative asked her to quit. After a year and a half of working at the EdTech,

during which, by the way, she received three awards. She told the Ken reporters, Alifia Khan and Vanita Patnagar, and I'm quoting her, when I resisted, they said that if I didn't, they would sack me and I would face a lot of problems in getting my dues. End quote. For the resignation, she told the Ken that they promised her the salary of the month by the first of the next month and an extra month's salary within 45 days.

A former business manager at the Bangalore office of Bayju's quit last year after three years of working there. Why? Because the work pressure started affecting his health. When we spoke to him, he still had not found a job. Soon enough, he figured out that recruiters were not calling because of Bayju's on his resume. So he changed it and wrote Think and Learned. on Private Limited instead. There are numerous stories like this. Baju's employees are discovering that they are suddenly unhirable. An academic specialist from Odisha who was sacked in July last year said that he had enrolled

in a Bachelor of Education course so that he could get a better paying offline job. Because by June 2022, things had already started going down. Now the question is, yes, the company is down in the dumps, but why are you? its employees bearing the brand. Stay tuned. In its glory days, Bayju's was indeed a huge job generator for people in smaller cities and towns. And that was because it was offering remote work. And this is what makes its employees unhirable now. According to Karthik Mandaville, founder of the HR technology startup called Springworks, most companies now want their employees to be in office at least once or twice a week.

But say, for someone who wants to continue working from a small town like Raipur, the options are very limited. And then there is also the problem of perception. Vivek Mehta, the director at ABC consultants, told us that when getting hiring mandates, certain companies have specifically told them not to look at Bayju's employees because they are concerned about their ethics. People from Bayju's are not seen as coming from a great organization or company. The perception is that they have taken shortcuts to growth shown inflated sales,

and they think that now this is exactly what is coming to bite Bayju's employees. Now, of course, this is not universal, but it has made recruiters cautious. If you remember, Bayju's has already been pulled up for unethical selling practices by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. It was its super aggressive sales strategy that backfired, on it in the long run. A former business manager from the Bangalore office told us that the BDAs or business development associates would book courses in the names of their relatives or friends by paying

an initial deposit of $5,000. There was a 15-day refund period and they knew well how to do it. For example, they would show a sale of $1,000 but actually there was none. Now, what about those who have still managed to stick around? What's going on with them? Coming up next. For employees who are still working at the attack giant, every day is a challenge. After the layoffs in March 23, the company not only stopped giving incentives,

but also asked its teachers to take on more responsibilities. Things like parents' teachers' meetings, with each session lasting up to 20 minutes. A physics teacher with Baiju told Ken, and I'm quoting him, we did five hours of live classes daily, four to six PtMs or parents' teachers' meets, paper corrections and reviewed some other tutors' lectures. Sometimes we worked for over 10 hours a day. End quote. For others, the absence of work made them restless.

A senior resource in Baiju's product communications team from Delhi told us that their manager changed three times in a span of seven months. He said that earlier there was quite a lot of work. But after cost-cutting, market spending got cut. So they nearly stopped performance marketing. Since then, they had barely anything to do. Plus, they had to deal with the uncertainty about job security. Basically, it led to a lot of stress amongst employees.

And that is not all. The employees also had angry parents to deal with. A former business development associate who worked with Baiju's for over three and a half years showed us a video which he claimed was from July last year when parents were demanding a refund from them. They called the police to a tuition centre in Jodpur, Rajasthan. Though the Ken could not verify the exact date of the incident, the video clearly showed agitated parents, employees and the police.

All of this is a lot. And I'm sure you can see how this intense pressure to push growth that ultimately fell on Baiju's employees has ended up becoming the source of many of its troubles. Daybreak is produced from the Newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters, subscriber-only apps, and podcast extras. Head to the Ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website. I am Snikdha Sharma, your host, and today's episode was edited by my colleague Rajiv Sien.