Byju’s Shuts Down Thiruvananthapuram Office And Asks Employees To Resign; Kerala Government Orders Probe

The Kerala government has ordered a probe into the forced resignation of over 100 employees at Byju's now shut Thiruvananthapuram office.

This comes after members of Pratidhwani, a welfare organisation of employees at Technopark, where the Byju’s office was located, met Labour Minister V Sivankutty.

The affected employees demanded a month’s salary and encashment of all earned leaves. They said that the company had abruptly decided to shut down the Thiruvananthapuram office without giving any notice.

A company official said that this restructuring and cost-cutting was necessary to make Byju’s profitable. He also said that while some of the Thiruvananthapuram based operations were being discontinued to reduce redundancy, the rest of the team was offered the opportunity to relocate to Bengaluru and they were given more than a month’s time to decide.

The Byju’s official also said that the employees not willing to relocate have been given a decent exit package in the form of extended health insurance benefits, outplacement services and garden leave.

The affected employees would also be given an assured opportunity to be rehired at any other Byju’s operational centre in India.

In the quest to turn profitable by the end of the ongoing financial year, Byju’s has been on a layoff spree.

Few weeks back, it fired over 2,500 of its employees across all verticals. Before this it laid off about 300 employees each at WhiteHat Jr and Toppr, two of the many Ed-Tech companies that it has acquired.

According to a report by Inc42, the Ed-Tech space is one of the worst affected by the ‘startup winter’, ie, drying up of funding and has seen more than 7,000 layoffs. Byju’s has contributed to more than half of these layoffs.