BYJU’S appoints ex-Amazon execs Sunil Sharma, Darshan Bhandari as VP, Engineering

Indian edtech company Byju's has onboarded Sunil Sharma and Darshan Bhandari in separate roles as vice-presidents of its engineering department. While Sharma joins as Vice-President, Engineering of Student and Teacher Experiences, Bhandari has taken on the role of Vice-President, Engineering at Byju's Tuition Centre and Devices.

An official statement by the company said that Sharma will be working to improve "critical technologies to enhance student, parent, and teacher experiences" at Byju's, as well as its customer care and 'mentor connect' services.

Meanwhile, Bhandari will helm the hybrid learning platform at Byju's, called Byju's Tuition Centre. The executive will look to scale the company's technological capabilities to reach more users, by carrying forward its app development mandate.

In a statement on the appointments, Anil Goel, President, Technology at Byju's, said, “While Sunil's expertise across technology, strategy, and execution will bolster BYJU’S ongoing initiatives to optimally leverage technological solutions and improve student experience, Darshan will play a key role in enhancing tech-led growth, providing support for improved front-end and back-end processes and helping us achieve our overarching digital and technology goals."

With a career spanning over 21 years, Sharma has experience of scaling technology teams across companies such as Amazon, Hewlett Packard and AGT International. He is an alumnus of XLRI Jamshedpur. In his last stint, he was head of technology for freight auditing and payments at Amazon.

Whereas, Bhandari has over 18 years of experience and has worked with companies such as Amazon, Reliance Jio Infocomm, and Amdocs. Before joining Byju’s, he was leading the technology for world wide customer returns as well as product support at Amazon.

According to reports, last month, Byju’s has laid off over 2,500 full-time and contractual employees across its group companies including Topper, WhiteHat Jr and its core team, as the company looks at ways to moderate costs and streamline the process of integrating several units — after two successive years of exponential growth.