Online learning platform Vedantu has laid off 424 employees, nearly 7 per cent of its total workforce, indicative of heat faced by the edtech sector as more educational institutions are returning to offline mode. Earlier this month, the company had fired 200 contractual as well full-time employees.
“There is no easy way to say this but I am truly sorry. Out of 5,900 Vedans (employees), 424 of our fellow teammates i.e about 7 per cent of our company, will be parting with us,” Krishna wrote in a blog post.
“This has been an extremely difficult call to make, and I want each Vedan to understand why V (Vedantu) had to take this call and what it means to you and the future of Vedantu,” Krishna added.
Vedantu has been focusing on reducing the cost of its courses to manage the tapering demand for online education, as offline learning centres open up.
The company has used Artificial Intelligence, voice synthesis and content development to bring down course expenses.
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Vedantu is not alone in this exercise. In the past few months, Unacademy had laid off around 1,000 employees. Earlier this month, Byju’s laid off around 800 employees of one of its unit, White Hat Jr. Vedantu is currently the fifth most-valuable edtech startup in India after Byju’s, Unacademy, Eruditus and UpGrad. Founded in 2011 by Krishna, Anand Prakash and Pulkit Jain, the company gained unicorn status last September after it raised $100 million in its Series E round, from investors such as ABC World Asia, Coatue and Tiger Global, taking its valuation to over $1 billion.
