BYJU’s has dismissed media reports that it intends to shut down Whitehat Jr.
Byju’s acquired WhiteHat Jr in 2020 at an enterprise value of $300 million.
A company spokesperson said that BYJU’s is merely optimizing Whitehat Jr for organic and efficient growth.
How rumors began
Sources within WhiteHat Jr had hinted at internal discussions that Byju’s might wind up operations of the coding platform it had acquired.
Along with this, WhiteHat Jr’s decision to lay off more than 300 employees last year in an attempt to cut costs further fuelled speculation that major changes may be coming.
Media buzz
TechCrunch had reported that the Bengaluru-based firm has been in talks in recent weeks to shut down Whitehat Jr.
Three investor sources familiar with the matter had spoken with TechCrunch.
BYJU’s had said that the move will combine its leadership in education technology and WhiteHat Jr’s strength in live online coding.
BYJU’s Full statement
“At the group level, in accordance with its steadfast commitment towards achieving operational profitability, BYJU’S is constantly evaluating and optimizing its business operations towards global growth.
As an ongoing activity, we are actively evaluating all our business units to ensure that they are aligned with our path to profitability.
Regarding the specific question on White Hat Junior, we have no plans of shutting it down.
We are merely optimizing it for organic and efficient growth.
We remain fully committed to delivering world-class educational experiences and solutions that empower students to achieve their full potential.” added a BYJU’s spokesperson.
WhiteHat Jr’s journey
Founded in November 2018, WhiteHat Jr helps children aged 6 to 14 years build commercial-ready games, animations and apps using the fundamentals of coding.
It has raised funding from investors such as Nexus Venture Partners and Omidyar Network, and has touched a revenue run rate of $150 million.
“With coding fast emerging as a key skill for the future, this integration will help BYJU’s further expand its offerings in India. This acquisition will also accelerate BYJU’s US expansion plans,” the company had said in a statement.
Acquisition spree
Toppr and White Hat Jr are among the 18-20 acquisitions and strategic investments of BYJU’s, on which it has spent $3 billion.
On an acquisition spree, the edtech giant made at least 10 acquisitions for a cumulative transaction value of around $2.5 billion in 2021.
It even attributed the delay in filing its financial results for FY21 and FY22 to the series of acquisitions made over the last two years.
Unabated layoffs
Simultaneously, the company has also been firing employees in the hundreds if not thousands.
This month the company fired over 900 employees.
Over 2,500 employees, or about 5 percent of the company’s staff across departments, were let go of in October last year in an effort to cut “redundancies” and achieve profitability for FY23.
Almost 300 people worldwide were let go Whitehat Jr as part of BYJU’s layoff.
These are reflective of BYJU’s ongoing efforts to aggressively reduce expenses after reporting a net loss of Rs 4,589 crore in FY21 (2020-21), the highest for an Indian startup that year.
WhiteHat Jr reported losses of Rs 1,690 crore in FY 2020-21.
