Embattled edtech major Byju’s, in an attempt to cut costs, is reducing facility management staff and other amenities. The decacorn’s Bengaluru offices are dealing with worsening work conditions.
An employee cited in a report by Moneycontrol remarks that the Prestige Tech Park office's toilets had started to look worse than government bus stops in November last year. The number of cleaning staff has been reduced. The refreshments, including beverages like coffee, tea and other breakfast options like bread and jam and soup, offered earlier have now disappeared.
For Byju’s, the deadline for $1.2 billion term loan B is approaching in three months. There are no signs of its two subsidiaries—Epic and Great Learning—getting sold. Cost cutting seems to be the only option.
The company’s expenses on workplace services including its tuition centres, corporate and sales offices fell drastically by 41 per cent to about Rs 25.73 crore in December last year, from Rs 44.03 crore in December 2022, data from an internal document sourced by Moneycontrol reveals. The biggest expense for Byju’s, it made up 53 per cent of all the operational costs.
In July, the company vacated its 558,000 square foot office in Bengaluru which was a property in Kalyani Tech Park. It has two corporate offices in Bengaluru at present, Prestige Tech Park and IBC Knowledge Park.
The monthly operational expenses, excluding salaries to the workforce, came down to Rs 48.6 crore in December from Rs 130.69 crore a year earlier which is a decrease of 63 per cent.
The cost cutting along with ongoing layoffs at the company is weighing heavily on the employees. According to media reports, founder and CEO Byju Raveendran is pledging personal assets to ensure continued salary payments to staff.
The latest data on the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation website reveals that it has held off all employee provident fund payments since November 2023, after making part payments in previous months. Presently, about 14,000 employees are on the payroll of Byju's' India entity.
