Indian Startups Bloodbath: Layoff 21K Techies, More Pink Slips Coming

NEW DELHI, (IANS) – As global layoffs deepen, Indian startups are not far behind and have sacked thousands of employees in the past 3-4 months, with many more to be given pink slips in the coming months amid deepening funding winter.

In India, more than 21,000 employees have been laid off by more than 70 startups today, including from unicorns like BYJU’S, Ola, MPL, Innovaccer, Unacademy, Vedantu, Cars24, OYO, Meesho, Udaan and many more.

The edtech sector has laid off the most employees, with 16 edtech startups laying off more than 8,000 employees to date.

With the onset of January, more and more Indian companies are slashing jobs across the spectrum. The new year has already seen more than 16 homegrown startups sack employees in the country.

Social media company Share Chat has laid off 20 percent of its workforce due to uncertain market conditions.

Backed by Twitter, Google, Snap and Tiger Global, Share Chat has about 2,300 employees, and the layoff impacted about 500 people at the company,

Healthnet unicorn Innovaccer has sacked nearly 245 employees, or about 15 per cent of its workforce, across teams in India and the US.

Innovaccer cofounder and CEO Abhinav Shashank cited an “uncertain macroeconomic environment” as the reason behind the job cuts, according to an internal mail sent to employees and accessed by leading startup news portal Inc42.

This was the second layoff at the company in around 4-5 months amid the deepening funding winter and recession fears.

In September last year, Innovaccer laid off nearly 120 employees, or less than 8 percent of its workforce.

Online food delivery platform Swiggy confirmed that the company is laying off 380 employees as food delivery growth slows.

Medi Buddy, an end-to-end digital healthcare platform in India, has laid off 8 percent of its workforce, around 200 people, across all departments as a restructuring exercise.

Homegrown online vehicle repair platform Go Mechanic, backed by Sequoia India, has laid off 70 percent of its workforce as the startup struggles to raise funds amid serious concerns about accounting troubles.

The company has asked the remaining staff to work without pay for three months, according to reports.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) voice automation startup Skit.ai has asked more than 115 employees to go, mostly from its India team, as part of the “restructuring process” amid the deepening funding winter.

Even IT giant Wipro has laid off more than 400 fresher employees for poor performance in internal assessment tests.