BYJU's Founder Speaks Out on Layoff Backlash and Future Plans! | YourStory

**THIS VIDEO WAS ORIGINALLY SHOT AT TECHSPARKS 2022 IN NOVEMBER**

BYJU's Founder Speaks Out on Layoff Backlash and Future Plans! | YourStory

In the fireside chat with Shradha Sharma, Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath had no hesitation in admitting and apologizing for mistakes made in chasing fast growth and how they are working on correcting those mistakes internally.

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:48 Layoff's in BYJU'S
4:14 Financial downfall of BYJU'S
8:55 Hard learnings
15:51 Called-off Investments
18:44 Scale and Purpose of BYJU'S
26:29 Next 12 months at BYJU'S
32:54 Criticism
36:58 Where does BYJU'S stand
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ABOUT SHRADHA SHARMA:

Shradha Sharma is the Founder & CEO of YourStory. She started YourStory in 2008 to tell stories of entrepreneurs - something that mainstream media was not ready to do in 2008. Since then, Shradha has scaled YourStory to become one of India’s leading digital media platforms covering every aspect of India’s new economy.

She was featured on Fortune’s list of the best 40 under 40 entrepreneurs in India for three years in a row. In 2018, she won the Forbes Power Trailblazers award and was twice featured on LinkedIn’s list of powerful influencers, along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and actor Priyanka Chopra.

ABOUT YOURSTORY:

YourStory is India’s biggest and definitive platform for startups and entrepreneurs related stories, resources, research reports, and analyses of the startup eco-system, mobile app developers, and more dedicated to promoting the startup ecosystem

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[mikkukumar]

Byju Ravindran's arrogance and body language speaks about the company.

[alokacs]

There is so much talk about money/business/growth and so little talk about learning and education !

[pavamchathunni]

Running a business is not everyone's cup of tea. Byju's is the perfect case study.

[drarunaj]

If you can sign up Messi for millions but refuses to pay PF contributions of employees says a lot...Mr.
Trust is something which never heals if its broken once.

[Learnerme]

Pure desparation and panic in Byju's body language. Naming a company in line with the founder's surname is probably the worst idea as it only signals dominance and control. Byju's could have been such a game changer and a flag bearer for the entire Indian startup ecosystem. But it's almost a lost cause now, a victim of insatiable greed and ambition.

[satheeshk]

Byju was in a hurry to grow but didn't take care of customers, so now very difficult to bring back trust with customers.

[pallaviharsha]

Banks and NBFCs stopped Funding your customers because
1. Many of them were not able to repay. You just pushed 30k tablet into their throat.
2. Many of them were not able to cancel the order at your end and stopped repaying the loans (but they didn't understood consequences of credit derating for them).

Overall you didn't create even a minute impact on education. It is just burning money. Nothing more.

[rajamanickam]

Mr.Raveendran said "Byju's is going down, no chance, no chance..companies fail not because of external reason, companies fail because of internal reasons." Exactly after a week.. they fired almost 60% of their work force..! Now read my comment again..🤣

[abbazuddin]

First hand experience with byjus, once you pay the money you cannot get the refund if you want it back, even if you call them within the refund period. No way possible, they'll say the accounts team will call in 24hrs but they won't, and you call them the next day the same thing the same dialogue repeats.

[arjunmitkar]

Personality of the founder reflects through their organisation…Enough Said.

[rajamanickam]

From Byju's Insider, Fresh batch of firing starts. This is the 2nd batch of firing in last 3 months in Tech and look how shamlessly he talks. Listen Mr.Byju, Byju's will go down and its inevitable.

[RJKK]

I really wish more people saw this video...not because of the way Byju or his wife was beating around the bush with every question they were asked, but the way the anchor addressed the whole matter...She was very transparent, polite n very honest in her questions...she was asking what we all had in our minds without any sugar coating in the most polite elegant way possible....straight forward questions with 'no clue what's going on' replies from both of them....when ur not going to give straight forward answers to the most simplest of questions, then there's definitely something wrong n fishy n it's a definite road to failure...

[ajsuraj]

The irony is as soon as this video got published, an another deadly round of firing happened.
Byjus has fired more than 15K employees & In not including the ones who left the organization due to their terrible work culture, pressure & cold firing techniques.

[pakukaushik]

I have 2 questions:
1) do you provide education for those who can't pay the fees
2) if some students don't like studies, do you educate them on the field of their niche, like music, sports, cooking etc.
If you don't do anything like above, then you are just making a business and not doing any good for the nation, as everybody can't be good in studies, study is just like an other curriculum activities

[Loveandlight]

The way Byjus treated it's employees is another story, even the teachers were made salesperson. This company was toxic as he'll! Why this topic isn't discussed?

[chaugulepankaj]

It clearly shows how frustrated he is looking defending his company. Feel sorry for him, but at the same time the company deserves the downfall because of their unfair practices to sell the courses.

[muralikrishnan]

Can’t believe she is bringing in women empowerment in to all these things. It’s because of people like her, people are stopping to respect women empowerment and it’s just an optics game by these corporates . Seriously these people should be accountable for their scams

[dr.santoshsomasundaran]

Compared to other coaching classes, byjus does not provide good classes, So far we have not received any personalized coaching despite being a subscriber of aakash and byjus premium for the last 4 years. Worried about the poor standard of coaching that as a parent I am providing to my child. During this final moments of preparation not able to talk to a responsible person of their company....only a mentor call from the call centre.

[Yashdavid]

Biggest problem was unnecessary scaling that byjus did. Unnecessary investments led to unnecessary growth which led to unecessary pressure from investors which led to unecesaary hiring, unnecessary targets and absolut unecessary and unethical strategies which Sales people used to sell a product. All this ultimately led to bad reviews from customers and that is the reason byjus is where it is now.

If they tried to be sustainable with a small workforce realistic targets the company could've gone a long way. The content of byjus, they way they teach has always been top notch. It literally could've been revolutionary in terms of learning but then greed happened.

[sanketdey]

Such a funny video. You will find it funny if you have worked in this organisation!!