Vedantu follows Unacademy’s footsteps — fires over 600 people in May

• Vedantu, on Wednesday, announced that it has laid off another 424 employees.
• The development comes only two weeks after it let go of 200 employees.
• The CEO Vamsi Krishna believes that capital will be scarce in the coming months.

Vedantu — an edtech company that competes with Byju’s and Unacademy — has laid off 424 employees, the company said on Wednesday (May 18). These 424 employees represent 7% of the company’s workforce of 5,900.

“Currently, the external environment is tough. War in Europe, impending recession fears, and Fed rate interest hikes have led to inflationary pressures with massive correction in stocks globally and in India as well. Given this environment, capital will be scarce in upcoming quarters,” Vamsi Krishna, chief executive officer and co-founder of Vedantu, said in a blog post.

This development comes two weeks after it fired 200 academicians and assistant teachers — both contractual and full time — due to performance issues. Vedantu had then said this is the part of a re-evaluation process and that it had informed the impacted employees in advance. Vedantu had also mentioned that over 100 people will be hired to replace those who were laid off on May 5.

Overall, Vendantu laid off 624 employees in May and this represents nearly 10% of its workforce.

Eight months back, the edtech giant — valued at over $1 billion in October 2021 — had also announced its plans to hire over 1,000 employees. However, Vedantu is not the only edtech company to do so. Its rival Unacademy has been trimming its workforce since February 2022 in order to turn profitable by the end of this year. The company, just like Vedantu, also laid off 600 employees or 10% of its workforce.

“Based on the outcome of several assessments, a small subset of employee, contractor, and educator roles were reevaluated 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…," Unacademy had said.

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