An American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, Amazon has announced the closure of its online learning academy in August 2023.
The Amazon Academy platform was a learning platform for high-school students in India. Amazon will be closing its online learning academy within less than two years of its launch. The company has not given any reason for the closure.
Amazon Academy platform was a platform that provided coaching for competitive exams including Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), which allows entry into top engineering colleges across India.
The e-commerce company has said in a statement that it had made the decision to discontinue Amazon Academy “in a phased manner to take care of current customers”.
“Amazon will discontinue Amazon Academy’s operations in a phased manner, starting August 2023, when our existing batch completes its test preparation module. We remain committed to our customers and want to assure them that this decision will have no impact on our services,” the company said in a statement.
Amazon Academy customers will have access to full course material online until October 2024. The company will also refund the full fee to those enrolled in the current academic batch. However, the company has not commented on the number of layoffs affected due to the closure of Amazon Academy.
The boom in virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Post the lockdown is over the major Edtech companies are facing a backlash.
Recently, A global ed-tech company, Byju’s said that is planning to lay off nearly 5 percent of the workforce, or 2,500 employees. The company said the layoffs are a step to cut costs and achieve overall profitability. It added that lay off of employees will be across the departments to cut costs. The layoffs will not happen immediately but will happen over six months.
Ed-tech startups Unacademy, Vedantu, FrontRow, Lido, and Frontrow among others have cumulatively retrenched thousands of employees this year.
In June, WhiteHat Jr and Toppr combined laid off about 500 employees. Earlier this year, edtech unicorn Unacademy laid off more than 1,000 employees.
