Is there a scary twist ahead in the Indian start-up story?

 

Cars24 laid off 600 workers, just days after Vedantu fired 424 employees. Y Combinator has asked founders of its portfolio firms to prep for the worst. Is there a twist ahead in the start-up story?

Investors, founders and CEOs have started sounding bugle on an impending funding crisis for start-ups and are taking a sombre tone on the medium-term outlook of the ecosystem.

After raising a record $35 billion in 2021, Indian start-ups are staring at falling valuations and a slowdown in funding as investor sentiment turns negative after more than a decade of bull-run that saw India mint a 100 unicorns.

This has prompted several start-ups lay off employees as focus turns towards profitability and cash conservation to increase runway. The latest to do so are SoftBank-backed pre-owned e-commerce platform Cars24 and ed-tech start-up Vedantu, which had turned unicorns in the last two years.

Cars24 reportedly laid-off 600 staff, making up 6% of the company’s total employee strength whereas Vedantu laid off 424 employees, about 7% of its workforce. It had laid off 200 of its contractual and full-time employees earlier this month.

Ed-tech unicorn Unacademy, too, recently laid off about 10% of its staff or 600 employees, including contractual workers and educators. Back in March, it had cut 100 jobs from its PrepLadder team.

That’s not all. Over 800 employees of WhiteHat Jr resigned from the Byju’s-owned start-up in the last two months after being asked to work from office. And in February, ed-tech startup Lido Learning shut down operations. Read Complete Article