Retrenching at startups likely to continue

- Over 10,000 employees lost their jobs

- Unacademy, WhiteHat Jr, Vedantu, FrontRow in the list

- Byju's laid off 600 staffers from its Toppr & WhiteHat Jr

- Byju's valuation at $22 bn

Bengaluru: With marquee unicorns laying off staffers, many experts predict that more employees are likely to be face such pressure in coming months despite no visible signs of slowdown in funding yet.

Employees working in the startups which fired staffers in recent months, meanwhile, have low morale, they added.

"We expect many more employees may have to face job uncertainty in coming months as startups optimise cost in anticipation of a slowdown. When well-funded companies are firing employees, how can you expect startups with less liquidity to sustain," said an industry veteran who helps startups in fund raising and other compliance activities.

This week, India's biggest startup in terms of valuation Byju's laid off 600 staffers- 300 from its Toppr learning platform &another 300 at coding platform WhiteHat Jr. Currently, Byju's valuation stands at $22 billion and the edtech giant acquired 10 entities last year at a combined investment of $2.5 billion.

Before Byju's, number of edtech startups including Unacademy, and Vedantu had fired employees. Around 10,000 employees had lost their jobs from these edtech startups such as Unacademy,

WhiteHat Jr, Vedantu, FrontRow, Udayy, Lido Learning and others so far.

While edtech startups are the most affected as students' enrolment fell with schools reopening across the country. However, apart from edtech firms, startups operating in other segments have also been affected.

Interestingly, most layoffs had happened in those startups that are well-funded and raised funds in several rounds from investors. The optimisation move was mostly aimed at conserving cash for facing an impending slowdown in global economy.

Meanwhile, Hurun India Future Unicorn Index 2022; list highlights that nearly 122 startups from 25 cities are on the path to become unicorns in the next two-four years.

However, the report noted that the ecosystem is going through a temporary slowdown.

"We believe there could be a short-term blip in the growth story," Anas Rahman Junaid, MD and Chief Researcher, Hurun India, said. "But the Indian start-up ecosystem's long-term potential remains resilient," he added. While Indian startup ecosystem is going through such turmoil, many startup founders have raised concerns over the low morale of employees of those startups where such optimisation moves had taken place.

"Just interacted with someone who is working at a startup that recently laid off some of his colleagues. Layoffs affect not just people who are let go, but also those who stay back. Decisions are hard, startups should continue, but founders should over-communicate in such times," Pravin

Jadhav, known as PJ in financial circles, tweeted recently. Jadhav is the Founder of Raise Financial Services along with an angel investor.