To cost-cut effort and address the imminent liquidity crisis, Byju’s has given up all offices across India, retaining only its headquarters at IBC, Knowledge Park, Bengaluru, as per reports.
This comes at a time when the company has been engaged in a dispute with its investors regarding the validity of the funds raised from a recently concluded rights issue offering.
As a result of the decision, the company has now mandated that all employees work from home indefinitely, except for those working out of its headquarters and approximately 300 Byju’s Tuition Centres across the country.
This also comes at a time when the company has held back part of February salaries for about 75 percent of its employees. The company currently has close to 14,000 employees in India. Byju’s, disbursed the payments after delaying it for about 10 days and promised to pay the balance once it is allowed to use the funds from the recently closed rights issue.
The decision to shut down all offices in the country was a part of the Byju’s India CEO Arjun Mohan’s restructuring plan, as per reports.
“This has been in works for over six months. The company has been shutting down offices across country as soon the lease for each expired,” said a source.
The company has laid off thousands of employees in the last 12 months as it battled a double blow of drying venture capital funding and slowing demand for online learning services. Since then, its investor board members have left too, citing differences with Raveendran.
The company has tried to fix some of the problems since then. Its early investor Ranjan Pai ploughed in the capital, it set up an advisory council with veterans such as Mohandas Pai and Rajnish Kumar and elevated Arjun Mohan as CEO. It is also in talks to divest assets such as Great Learning and Epic.