Zenius Returns Home to Tens of Employees

Startups EdTech Zenius is again taking steps to lay off dozens of its employees. The company argued that the economic climate had created challenges like never before, so management had to realign and re-prioritize the organization to ensure long-term growth.

"To achieve the goal of becoming a positive cash flow and ensure the sustainability of our company, Zenius has to make some difficult decisions that will directly affect our employees. All aspects of the business are being optimized to increase efficiency, including reducing workforce," said Zenius' management in an official statement. received DailySocial.id.

The company did not specify how many employees were affected by the decision. However, from the news circulating on social media, as many as 36 people out of 120 employees hit by layoffs. The affected team is engineer and products. If this news is true, Zenius currently has 84 employees left.

Since 2022, Zenius has announced layoffs twice. The first announcement was announced in May, they laid off about 200 people. Then the second announcement, in early August, it was reported that 600 people had been laid off from various divisions.

The company continued, "[..] Zenius understands that this is a difficult time for the people affected, so the company will continue their health insurance benefits until March 30, 2023 including their family members. In addition, Zenius also extends health counseling services with consultants our third parties until March 30, 2023."

Having thrived since the pandemic, Zenius has recruited massively. According to RevoU data, Zenius is ranked 8th with the addition of 599 people from 606 to 1.205 employees. This data was recorded in the timeframe May 2021-2022.

Edtech industry

DSResearch once reviewed the edtech industry in Indonesia titled "Edtech Report 2020: Transforming Education". Citing Holon IQ research results, they map edtech services into several categories: language learning, steam and coding, education financing, skills and jobs, higher education, verification, management and learning environment, higher education, and learner support. They also mapped 50 players EdTech significant in each category.

From a survey of 500 respondents, the types of popular edtech services that people have used and used the most are online tutors. Whereas less than 20% of people who have used MOOC (Massive open online race). Based on gender, 71,3% of men had used online tutors, while 74,1% of women had used e-learning.

It's just that, despite this lucrative potential, edtech services are not accessible to all students because the Indonesian education system is not well-equipped to rapidly increase online learning. Many students in rural areas lack connectivity, and many low-income students do not have access to the devices necessary to use services EdTech.

This report also emphasizes the sector EdTech Indonesia faces major hurdles that prevent it from replicating success rates in other technology sectors and in other countries.

The following are constraints from the supply side:

• difficult access to funding,
• High acquisition costs, especially for acquiring and retaining new customers,
• Lack of quality talent to develop and maintain products.

Then constraints from the demand side, including:

• Low willingness to pay from school and parents,
• Lack of digital literacy, particularly on the part of education providers,
• Poor digital infrastructure, which limits connectivity in remote areas and download speeds across the country.

The above conditions are further complicated by overlapping responsibilities between local and central government on new educational tools, together with the limited public education system, limited capacity and incentives to assess product potential. EdTech.

What's more, the growth of the sector EdTech Indonesia is in line with the investment made for this sector. Majority of companies EdTech founded in the last six years.