Unacademy Lays Off 350 Employees Months After Committing To No Layoffs; Third Round Of Job Cuts This Year

Unacademy Lays Off 350 Employees Months After Committing To No Layoffs

November 9, 2022: Ahead of the latest round of job cuts, Unacademy laid off 150 employees in June following a performance improvement plan.

Before that, also in April, EdTech laid off nearly 1,000 contract and full-time employees. Of those laid off, 300 were teachers, while the rest were in business, sales and other functions.

Now months after committing to further layoffs, edtech startup Unacademy has laid off another 350 employees to cut costs and turn a profit.

This is the third round of layoffs at the company that will affect about 10 percent of Unacademy’s workforce.

“I am very sad to announce that in order to reduce redundancies in our operations we will have to say goodbye to some of our most talented Unacademy employees.

It will be across these verticals that the Unacademy Group will have to make the difficult decision to scale down or close,” Gaurav Munjal, group cofounder and CEO, wrote in an internal memo to employees on Monday.

It may be mentioned here that Munjal had pledged not to retrench more employees in July. However, he has now apologized for the U-turn.

“I would like to sincerely apologize to everyone as we had committed to no layoffs in the organization but market challenges have forced us to re-evaluate our decisions.

Funding has slowed significantly,” he said. Separate pay for retrenched employees Stating that things are getting worse with each passing day, Munjal added that the employees who were laid off will get severance pay equivalent to their notice period and an additional two months’ salary.

Munjal said that those affected will be informed within 48 hours from the HR department. EdTech will also provide medical insurance coverage for an additional year as well as dedicated placement and career support.

On November 4, the CEO tweeted that Unacademy had reduced its monthly burn from $20 million to $7 million.

Ahead of the latest round of job cuts, Unacademy laid off 150 employees in June following a performance improvement plan.

Before that, also in April, EdTech laid off nearly 1,000 contract and full-time employees. Of those laid off, 300 were teachers, while the rest were in business, sales and other functions.

In the past few months, Indian startups have laid off thousands of employees to cut costs. Unacademy’s rival and India’s most valuable edtech company, Byju Raveendran led Byju, also recently said goodbye to around 2,500 employees.

Another edtech unicorn Vedantu has laid off more than 700 employees in 2022. Edtech firm Frontero last month laid off another 130 employees, about 75 percent of its workforce, in another cost-cutting exercise. It had earlier pink-slipped around 145 employees in May.

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