Edtech major BYJU’S, India’s most valued startup, will not renew its sports branding partnerships, co-founder and CEO Byju Raveendran has confirmed.
BYJU’S currently has three large branding partnerships with the BCCI, ICC and FIFA that will be up for renewal.
“The biggest optimisation that you will see over the next few months is that you will see us significantly cutting down branding because we think we have achieved the kind of brand awareness which is required for the segment as well as for the company. So you will see us exiting some of those branding contracts,” Raveendran told Moneycontrol on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“We won’t renew some of the partnerships. We have multiple partnerships with BCCI, ICC, and FIFA and by taking out these branding initiatives by not renewing them, that’s where you will see a lot of improvement (on the company’s financials),” he added.
BYJU’S has been looking to cut costs aggressively since last year after it reported a net loss of Rs 4,589 crore in FY21 (2020-21), the largest by a startup in India for that year. In October last year, the company laid off over 2,500 employees, or about 5 percent of its workforce across departments, in order to reduce “redundancies” and turn profitable for the current fiscal year FY23 (2022-23).
