Hundreds of employees of Unacademy have been laid off in a possible attempt at cost-cutting, sources told Outlook Business. Unacademy is India’s second-largest ed-tech firm after rival Byju Raveendran's BYJU'S.
An Unacademy spokesperson told Outlook Business, that Unacademy employs 6000 people, and less than 600 people have been laid off based on non-performance or under-performance. The company said that this does not account for 10 per cent of the company’s workforce, pointing out some media reports that claimed the company has laid off at least 10 per cent of the workforce.
Softbank-backed Unacademy offers a slew of educational products and services through its flagship Youtube channel. Unacademy said, “Unacademy is built on a culture of high performance and transparency, and a key aspect of that is the transparency and objectivity with which we conduct our annual appraisal process. 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 organization 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.”
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“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. We value everyone’s contributions at Unacademy, and we wish all of them the best of luck and thank them for all their efforts at Unacademy,” it added.
Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic for the past two years, online education gained momentum in India. The ed-tech firm currently has a valuation of $3.8 billion, after it raised $440 million from Temasek in August last year.
“We are extremely bullish about our core test-prep business and in the growth of our Group companies Relevel, PrepLadder, and Graphy. Our test-prep business is growing over 50 per cent 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. However, the most remarkable achievement is that Relevel has delivered $2 Mn+ worth of total offers to candidates who have passed the Relevel Test,” Unacademy said.
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