BYJU's Faces Litmus Test as Edtech Bubble Bursts in India

For Vipluv, 24, a job offer from the leading edtech company BYJU's was like a dream come true. He, along with four-five of his friends, joined the company as Business Development Trainee-Sales in February this year for a monthly stipend of about Rs 15,000.

After a six-week training, he was promised Rs 45,000 as salary at a location of his choice — which was Agra or Noida in his case, as he had relatives there to support him on his first stint out of his home-town.

To his shock, after the training period was over, he was asked by the HR team to join Lucknow as his next location, on a salary of just Rs 25,000.

"I decided to quit as it was impossible for me to survive in Lucknow at Rs 25,000. Neither the location or the salary that was promised to me were agreed to. All of my friends resigned as none wanted to go to the locations where they had to struggle to survive," Vipluv told IANS.

As India reopens amid 'hybrid normal' and schools and colleges return to normal, edtech platforms see a significant dip in the demand for online learning and some of such firms have either shut shops or fired employees in recent days.

BYJU's is also facing the heat to keep up with the changing times.

Reliable industry sources told IANS that its global expansion plans have not yet reached the scale it had planned.

Most notable startup under its umbrella that is facing trouble is online coding platform WhiteHat Jr, bought in July 2020 for $300 million.

With WhiteHat Jr, BYJU's aimed to take coding to the world from India, hiring teachers on contractual-basis.

The fact is that the platform earned just Rs 12.34 crore and Rs 11.07 crore from its Australia and UK markets, respectively.

WhiteHat Jr posted a massive Rs 1,690 crore loss in the financial year 2021, while generating an operating revenue of Rs 484 crore in the same period.

The platform's losses skyrocketed in FY21 and its expenses reached Rs 2,175 crore — compared to Rs 69.7 crore in FY20.

Sources close to the company told IANS that WhiteHat Jr has asked its nearly 3,000 sales and support employees to report to either Mumbai or Gurugram (out of its 5,000-strong workforce that includes teachers which are on contractual-basis hence not full-time employees), from April 18. (IANS)

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