Matrix Venture Partners-backed test-prep coaching centre FIITJEE hasn't paid salaries to its employees for the second month in a row.
According to media reports, FIITJEE, which is one of the oldest test prep firms in the country, only paid half the salary for January. A few company executives had said the salary was withheld citing cash flow problems.
According to a Moneycontrol report, the company is yet to pay the February salary as well. This, the company claims, is not due to an immediate liquidity crisis, but to send a "wake-up call" to the employees to work harder.
The company, which is facing increased competition from new players in the block like Physics Wallah and Unacademy, reportedly told its employees that salary is not their right and that they need to earn it.
“When you don't follow us and don't do your duty properly at the centers then we can't run the centers efficiently enough. Coming to the office without clear goals will not take you anywhere. Salary is not a matter of right, it needs to be earned by doing what is expected of you to do,” founder and managing director of FIITJEE Dinesh Kumar Goel told employees in a recent e-mail, reported Moneycontrol.
Goel claimed that most managing partners of the company are not acting as entrepreneurs and "the basic entrepreneurial spirit is missing from most of the staff members."
A FIITJEE spokesperson said the "wake-up call" is for the business team which failed to convert "the appreciation received by students and the great work done by our teachers into more business."
The spokesperson also claimed that the delay in salaries was because some of the employees failed to submit the required information for the ongoing appraisal.