Byju's mandates work from home and closes nearly all of its office spaces in India

The struggling edtech business Byju’s has closed all of its offices in India, keeping just its headquarters at IBC, Knowledge Park in Bengaluru, as part of a massive cost-cutting move to deal with the impending liquidity problem. The company has mandated that all employees work from home indefinitely, except for those working out of its headquarters and approximately 300 Byju's Tuition Centres across the country.

This comes at a time when the company has held back part of February salaries for about 75 percent of its employees. The company currently has close to 14,000 employees in India. Byju's, disbursed the payments after delaying it for about 10 days and promised to pay the balance once it is allowed to use the funds from the recently closed rights issue.

According to sources, the decision to shut down all offices in the country was a part of the Byju's India CEO Arjun Mohan's restructuring plan. “This has been in works for over six months. The company has been shutting down offices across country as soon the lease for each expired," said the source.

 The company has laid off thousands of employees in the last 12 months as it battled a double blow of drying venture capital funding and slowing demand for online learning services. Since then, its investor board members have left too, citing differences with Raveendran.

The company has tried to fix some of the problems since then. Its early investor Ranjan Pai ploughed in the capital, it set up an advisory council with veterans such as Mohandas Pai and Rajnish Kumar and elevated Arjun Mohan as CEO.