The Indian edtech sector continues to suffer with job cuts as the Gaurav Munjal-led Unacademy is planning to trim down 12 per cent of its entire bandwidth in another round of layoffs.
“We have taken every step in the right direction to make our core business profitable, yet it’s not enough. We have to go further, we have to go deeper. Unfortunately, this has led me to take another difficult decision. We will be reducing the size of our team by 12% to ensure that we can meet the goals we are chasing in the current realities we are facing,” addressing the development, Munjal said in a note.
The development a few came months after Relevel, an Unacademy-owned brand fired nearly 40 employees as a cost-cutting measure.
On Tuesday, the company announced that it would hive off CodeChef, a company, which it acquired in 2020.
This has been the edtech major’s fifth round of layoffs. Last year, the unicorn laid off nearly 1,500 employees. Its net loss also mounted to Rs 2,848 crore in the financial year (FY) 2022 from Rs 1,537 crore in FY21. However, the company managed to bag an 80 per cent jump in its operating revenues to Rs 719 crore in FY22 from Rs 398 crore in FY21.
Indian start-up ecosystem has been going through a rough patch since 2022. Last year, nearly 20,000 employees lost their jobs in the Indian tech space. Edtech alone was responsible for 44 per cent of the entire layoffs. Highly valued edtech giants were seen to cut down employee numbers to keep their companies on the right track. For instance, Indian edtech decacorn Byju’s announced firing five per cent of its 50,000-strong employee bandwidth. Bengaluru-based unicorn Vedantu was also seen to fire 350 employees last November.