Zenius to temporarily shut down

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Zenius, an Indonesian edtech company, has announced that it will temporarily shut down its services after facing operational challenges, according to its co-founder and CEO Sabda Putra Subekti.

“We apologize and express gratitude to our users and partners for the trust they have bestowed upon us,” Subekti said in a statement.

The company did not specify when its services would be unavailable. It also did not specify what will happen to its employees – Zenius’ LinkedIn page lists over 500 staff.

Over the past two years, the company showed signs of struggle as it underwent three rounds of job cuts. The first set of layoffs affected more than 200 employees in May 2022, followed by a second round in August 2022 and a third in February 2023.

After the third round of job cuts, CEO Rohan Monga became Zenius’ president, while the company reappointed Subekti to the top job. Subekti had originally co-founded Zenius and was leading the company right before Monga – previously a COO at Gojek – took over in 2019.

Following the layoffs, Subekti stated that the company was “stable.” He also expressed plans to double down on offline education to revive its fortunes – the company had acquired offline tutoring giant Primagama in February 2022.

Zenius, founded by Subekti and Medy Suharta in 2004, has raised a total of US$20 million in disclosed funding from investors such as Northstar Group, Openspace, MDI Ventures, and Alpha JWC Ventures. Its last funding round came in March 2022.

See also: After layoffs, Zenius bets on offline learning in revival strategy