By Salman S H

Edtech unicorn Byju’s is looking at shutting down its subsidiary WhiteHatJr, a coding platform that it acquired over two years ago at an enterprise valuation of $300 million, sources aware of the development said. WhiteHatJr was one of the most high-profile acquisitions made by Byju’s out of the 17 acquisitions it has made till date. However, Byju’s now feels that the coding platform has drawn considerable criticism and lost the potential it once had.

“Byju’s co-founder Byju Raveendran himself is not keen on continuing to run under the brand anymore,” sources said.

Further, sales conversions have also dropped massively after reopening of schools post-Covid, therefore WhiteHatJr’s custom acquisition cost didn’t make sense for the amount of revenue it was raking in.

The development comes just a few months after it laid off a significant number of employees. Last year, the company announced that it would be cutting jobs as part of a restructuring effort, which reportedly affected around 10% of its  workforce. The move was seen as a sign that the platform was struggling to maintain its growth and was facing increased competition from other edtech startups.

“The startup had almost massively scaled down online and print advertising spending last year to keep costs under check. But the CAC cost was still too big to sustain the expenditure of running the company, even after WhiteHatJr began a shift towards below-the-line (BTL) marketing campaigns, moving away from print and TV campaigns,” sources said.

A Byju’s spokesperson, however, denied that it is planning to shut down WhiteHatJr.

“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 WhiteHatJr, we have no plans of shutting it down. We are merely optimising it for organic and efficient growth,” the spokesperson said.  FE