Lido Learning closure: Startups open arms to hire Lido employees out seeking work

As employees of Lido Learning flood networking sites and job boards with employment requests in the wake of the firm closing down, edtech firms and startups across domains have stretched out their arms for the employees to come on board.

“Lido Learning team, we are hiring across teams. Please ping, if you have still not found a good role,” said Krishna Kumar, founder and chief executive of Simplilearn.

“There are openings across all edtech companies and you should have multiple options to choose from! We are living in a world where great team members like you decide which organisation you want to work for. Not the other way around,” he added.

Edtech Extramarks said they understand the value and expertise LIDO employees bring to the organization, and "we'd love to be in the pool of your choices! We are hiring across teams, send your profiles...".

Rabi Agrawal, head of human resources at FloBiz, said his neobank for small and medium businesses can look for roles for the affected employees.

“Can someone connect me to Lido Learning founders/HR team? We can look for roles for the affected employees in our organisation,” Agrawal said.

Akanksha Hazari, founder of LoveLocal (formerly known as m.Paani) which digitises operations of local retailers, said the firm has roles in growth and marketing, and engineering and product designs, among others, inviting Lido’s staff to apply.

“Hi Lido Learning team, we are building a dream team LoveLocal and have open roles in Growth & Marketing, Engg, Product, Design, Content & Analytics. Apply: Dream@lovelocal.in And remember, failure is success in progress,” Hazari wrote in a LinkedIn post.

Similarly, more than half a dozen other startups like Yellow.ai, foreignadmits, and CoachGuru offered jobs to laidoff workers. Coachgruru said it is looking for candidates who have just less than one year of experience.

This comes as employees of Lido Learning started flooding professional networking sites.

“Hello connections, my sister Ayushi Srivastava is urgently looking for an opportunity in the field of HR. She is having 6 months of experience as a Talent Acquisition executive at Lido learning. Any help would be greatly appreciated,” said Ankit, a LinkedIn user. 

The closure

Lido Learning, an edtech firm offering online tuitions, closed down earlier this month and the management has asked employees to tender resignations. Founded in April 2019, Mumbai based Lido Learning offers online tuition in the school education space and has raised over $20 million to date.

Though the exact number of employees working there is not known, it is believed that the edtech firm had 900 to 1200 staff members. "The company was facing a fund crunch for the last couple of months and was struggling to pay salary to employees in 2022," said an edtech industry insider.

Ronnie Screwvala had invested $10 million in the firm. Other investors include Paytm CFO Madhur Deora, Picus Capital, BACE Ventures, and 9Unicorns.

Founded by Sahil Sheth, Lido Learning was aggressive in brand building and expansion and in September had said that it is venturing out to the US and Canada with offerings including coding classes. To be sure, its website is still alive.

While the closure will open up a debate on employee welfare in startups, promises and sustenance, other startups coming forward to offer open positions is a welcome break, and augurs well for talent, and the larger employment market.