Divya Gokulnath talks about Messi deal amid mass layoffs at Byju’s

The Lionel Messi partnersgip is being announced soon after Byju’s said it would be trimming its workforce by 5%, which means 2,500 Byju’s employees would be out of a job. So, isn’t it bad optics to be signing 2022’s most expensive athlete at a time like this? “
It is sad that there has to be a Messi coming on board to give voice to Education For All. If you look at my LinkedIn post, even yesterday I spoke about Education For All and I spoke about it because it was a big partnership with the Andhra Pradesh government where we empowered 30 lakh students and two lakh teachers. It is one of our biggest initiatives in Education for All, but nobody picked it up!

It is an ongoing thing and in fact we continuously speak about Education for All, the work that we have been doing over the last few months. It is not that we are announcing this today. A company always has two things – there is business and there is beyond business. Beyond business is where there is community impact, where you give back to society at large. Both these tracks were running in parallel. It is just that the media has always chosen to focus on the business part. But there has always been a very successful, highly impactful beyond business initiative which has been running equally successfully.

If your intention is to actually have education for all and to make a difference, why are you bothered if anybody is picking up the story or not? Why do you need Lionel Messi to make people pick it up? Just do the good work
We are doing good but sometimes you need more participation to make something more successful. I will just give you an example of what we are doing in Education For All. We have initiatives where anybody can contribute a device. We load it with Byju’s content and we give it for free.

In the last three hours, the amount of attention Education for All has received is something it has not received in the last 18 months. It is saddening and anguishing. An initiative like this will never be successful until so many more people are involved and giving back to society and there is a huge potential and we can do this together. But you need the same visibility for it.

It clearly shows that if the right ambassador is there to take that message out for you, it becomes even more successful. So this is not about whether somebody writes about us or not, it is about can we make this platform even more successful? Can we make this initiative even more successful? Can we have more people participating in it because it is ultimately something where the more we do it, the better it gets. At a larger scale, it can create even more impact. It is education that we are talking about. So frankly, I am not bothered about who likes or who does not but it is just that it does not get the attention it deserves and today finally it has got it.

One month back, we did speak about how it is giving better learning outcomes, we are in partnership with NITI Aayog in the remotest parts of the country and from 3.5 million children, the number of children who are benefitting is 5.5 million children. Ultimately valuations can come and go but values are forever, value creation is forever.

In your previous answer, you used the word saddening and anguishing. Are your employees today saddened and anguished that Byju’s is willing to go out, make an effort and spent a long time and a lot of money to sign up Lionel Messi, the world’s most expensive player. How are you explaining this to the 2,500 employees who have been asked to go and who will be asked to go in the days to come?
You introduced Messi as the world’s most expensive footballer. I should also tell you that he is also the humblest one who values education a lot. Messi can choose to partner with multiple brands but he did with Byju’s, an Indian company, because he believed in our cause and in our mission that we can enhance human potential. Education is a big enabler to enhance human potential.

I would reiterate that this is not a normal partnership. This is a social impact partnership and it is about coming together and adding more value to each other. The values that three of us – Messi, Byju and me – like would be what we think about education, development, children and the future. It is exactly the same.

Speaking about the rationalisation, it was the toughest decision for both Byju and me to take for the company and we have spoken about it. How much we say and apologise, it is not enough. It would be the last thing that we would want to do but sometimes what Byju and Divya want is not what Byju’s as a company demands. We did it because this would help us move towards our path to profitability by the fourth quarter of this year. Certain steps had to be taken and they were taken.

It was taken keeping multiple viewpoints in mind and keeping the larger business perspective in mind but today I do not want to focus on that.

If education for all is indeed going to be where you and Byju Raveendran are dreaming for, your core, which is the business itself, has to be rock solid. In a way, the two might be intertwined.
If I may add, the core is very strong. While I know that rationalisation is one aspect of this path to profitability. There is also realignment of marketing expenses. There is also a reduction of operational costs. It is a three-step plan or a three-step approach that will help us and over there only because since the core is strong, can we continue with the same revenue run rate of Rs 1,000 crore per month while ensuring that we are going towards profitability. It will not happen unless your core is strong.

It will not happen unless you are confident in the new model that you are scaling. We have launched 250 hybrid learning centres across the country where children can learn both online and offline and both Aakash and Great Learning are subsidiaries that are scaling better than ever before. So the core is definitely strong.