Ed-Tech Giant Unacademy fires 1000 employees as a part of its Cost Cutting Exercise

Ed Tech Start-Up Unacademy, which started off as a YouTube channel has laid off 1000 people as a part of its Cost-Cutting Exercise. As per Money Control, the employees including on-roll staff in Sales and Marketing, and Contractual Educators have been sacked. “Unacademy hasn’t been in profit since the last fiscal year, and that’s the reason this layoff has been done”, said an anonymous educator who has been laid off. He further added that “We were not given any prior notice. They indirectly said that either you work with us for 14 hours a day with the same package, or resign. That was merely their way of asking us to leave. They have done that in the past too, but this time they have done it at a massive scale.”

Last week, the SoftBank-backed Unacademy asked around 600 employees to leave. The Bengaluru-based company is looking to downsize amid an impending slowdown in venture funding and tightening of the overall economic environment. Their balance sheet revealed that last year, Unacademy suffered a loss of around 1400 Crores.

An Unacademy spokesperson was quoted saying, “Based on the outcome of several assessments, a small subset of the 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 company has in good faith ensured they receive certain additional benefits and a generous severance,”, referring to the high “performance” and “transparency” that the company was building.