Over 800 WhiteHat Jr employees have resigned in the last two months after being asked to work from office. Mumbai-based WhiteHat Jr, which was acquired by edtech giant Byju’s for $300 million in 2020, had asked all its employees to work from office within a month’s time.
The employees who resigned didn’t want to relocate to their respective office locations. These include employees in areas such as sales, coding and math. A few employees termed the exercise a cost-cutting exercise and some said giving just a month’s time to relocate is not enough and the firm should have increased their pay for moving to expensive cities.
In 2020, WhiteHat Jr Founder Karan Bajaj sold his 18-month-old start-up to Byju’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer Byju Raveendran for $300 million in an all-cash deal, over the video conferencing platform Zoom. Bajaj continued to lead and scale this business in India and the US.
In February, edtech startup Lido Learning shut operations, leading its employees to seek help via social media platforms. Many employees and vendors complained about not getting salaries for nearly two months and delayed payments on professional networking platforms and social media.
Recently, edtech unicorn Unacademy laid off nearly 10 percent of its workforce in a move that is being seen as a focus on profitability as well as consolidation and cost-cutting drive in the space amid the pandemic.
