Education technology startup Byju’s has said it plans to double its workforce this year by adding 3,000-3,500 employees, kicking off one of the largest such recruitment drives by a private internet company in the last few years.
Unlike food delivery firms Swiggy or Zomato that largely do the bulk of their hiring for the delivery workforce, Byju’s is looking to hire about 2,000 people for its sales and operations team, while the rest will be added to its content-creation team. Incidentally, the recruitment plans at Byju’s are double of what Amazon has planned for India according to publicly available data on the company’s global website.
Backed by the likes of Naspers and Tencent, Byju’s has previously said the company has been growing at 100% for the last three years and is on target to touch Rs 1,400-crore revenue in the year ending March 2019. It says it has around 2 million annual paid subscribers. The mega hiring plans come months after Byju’s closed a $540-million round, making it the fifth-most valued company in the country at $3.6 billion — behind Flipkart, Paytm, Ola and Oyo.
“Many of the top startups and IT players have gone slow on hiring and they are only filling positions that are vacant due to attrition. In recent times, not many have announced doubling their workforce. Byju’s, having raised good capital recently, would also attract new talent looking for opportunities,” said Kris Lakshmikanth, CEO of recruitment consultancy firm The Head Hunters India. Several companies like Flipkart and Snapdeal also had to lay off after hiring aggressively in 2014 and 2015.
All of this comes on the back of Byju’s $120-million acquisition of US-based Osmo, which the Bengaluru-based company will use to enter the kids’ segment (age 3-8) by the middle of this year, with a standalone app. Byju’s founder Byju Raveendran told TOI the company has also outlined an investment plan in the range of $50-100 million for overseas expansion in English-speaking markets like the US, the UK and others. The details of the same are being worked out as to which countries will see higher capital allocation.
Raveendran said the average conversion ratio for subscriptions in the kids’ segment is higher than their current market user-base, which is children aged 9-17 years. So, an additional team of sales executives on the ground would be critical.
“Over a period of time, this segment could fetch a significant part of overall sales (30-40%) for our company. On the content side, we are producing everything locally, whether that’s for India market or abroad. English being the common language among our target international markets, the content being made here is relevant outside and thus needs to be of international standards,” he said.
People aware of Byju’s operations said it relies heavily on its on-ground sales team to push these subscriptions to parents of target users, which often start from a cold call. Raveendran said he is adding almost about 100 people in the content team every month.
The company is also believed to be in talks with several creators of popular cartoon characters to potentially integrate them on Byju’s planned foray into the kindergarten segment. But Raveendran did not disclose specific names. Osmo, which is leading Byju’s into the kids segment, essentially relies on augmented reality (AR) to create ‘playful’ learning for kids across math, science and geography, among others.
The company is deliberating if the new app for kids will have another branding. Osmo’s co-founder Pramod Sharma was down in Bengaluru to work closely with the new owners of his company.
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