Post ‘assessments’, Unacademy hands pink slips to about 600 staff, educators

The majority of the layoffs were carried out at the end of March. “Less than 600 employees/contractual workers and educators have been laid off,” an official statement said. Unacademy added: “… based on the outcome of several assessments, a small subset of employee, contractor, and educator roles were re-evaluated due to role redundancy and performance, as is common for any organisation of our size and scale. The vast majority of roles impacted has been a result of that process, and the efficiency we aim to drive in the broader business”.

“We have discussed and parted ways with the identified people, in accordance with their respective contracts. Further, the company has in good faith ensured they receive certain additional benefits and a generous severance,” a spokesperson for the startup said.

The development comes as a dampener to India’s booming, cash-rich edtech segment and follows the sudden shutdown of edtech firm Lido Learning earlier this year, which had left tutors, parents, students, and its employees in the lurch.

While Unacademy maintains that the retrenchment exercise was done after “several assessments”, some impacted employees that The Indian Express spoke to said that they did not receive prior notice by the company and claimed to be unaware of any feedback process prior to the decision of laying them off.

“I got a job there only two months ago and I wonder how many assessments a company can make in that little time to ascertain whether or not an employee is performing well or not,” said a person impacted by the firm’s move.

Even though a majority of the employees it let go off were from its test preparation team, Unacademy said that it was “bullish” about that part of its business. “Our test-prep business is growing over 50% YoY and our EBITDA percentage is also getting better. Relevel has witnessed unprecedented growth in the number of users and candidates placed. Currently there are over 1.8 million registered users on the Relevel platform,” said the firm’s spokesperson.

“As an organisation, we are focussed on becoming profitable by the end of Q4 CY2022 in our core business, while investing for growth in our group companies,” the firm stated. The layoffs are seen as a cost cutting exercise as the company focuses on core businesses like the Relevel job-tech test platform.

This is not the first move made by the company to reduce its cashburn. Last September, it shutdown Mastree, a startup focusing on the K12 education segment that it had acquired. According to Unacademy’s annual financial statements, the company’s revenues rose to Rs 398 crore in FY21 from Rs 65 crore in FY20. However, in the same time, its losses also ballooned to Rs 1,537 crore during FY21.