Lightspeed-backed edtech startup FrontRow lays off 130 more employees

Lightspeed-backed edtech startup FrontRow has laid off another 130 employees four months after sacking a similar number of employees in a bid to "start from scratch", said co-founder Ishaan Preet Singh.

“We have scaled down our team massively and are rethinking our acquisition channels and our go-to market from scratch. We have a 40 people team now who are committed to it and we still plan to build in the segment,” Singh told Moneycontrol.

The cofounder also said that during the edtech boom Frontrow had doubled down on its marketing and sales headcount, which did not fructify for the company. “Looking at the business in the last couple of years we have realised that it does not scale. A sales and marketing-led approach to this market didn’t work with our current delivery model,” added Singh.

In a late-night LinkedIn post on October 12, he said that the company would help its laid-off employees to get placed.

“We'll be helping them get placed (I'm sure very quickly), so if you're hiring across engineering, product, sales, generalists, operations, or customer support, please do DM or email me,” Singh said.

Front Row offers an e-learning platform for comedy, sports, creative arts, and hobbies. The Bengaluru-based company was founded in 2020 by Shubhadit Sharma, Mikhil Raj, and Ishaan Preet Singh and counts Elevation Capital, Lightspeed India, Eight Roads Ventures, GSV Ventures among others, along with Unacademy's Gaurav Munjal as its backers. Frontrow had raised $14 million as a part of its Series A round in September last year.

The startup has become the latest edtech startup to undertake mass layoffs as demand for online learning has fallen post the pandemic with schools, colleges, and physical tuition centers reopening. On October 12, Byju’s the world’s most-valued edtech startup announced 2,500 layoffs across departments.

Just like Front Row, even some of the largest edtech companies including Byju’s, Unacademy, and Vedantu are also rationalising their sales and marketing budgets. Last month, Moneycontrol reported how Unacademy had reduced its monthly burn to Rs 50-60 crore down from Rs 200 crore last year. In a tweet, the company’s co-founder and CEO Munjal, said that they ‘efficiently’ reduced digital marketing burn and they would also stop IPL advertisements from next year.

As the funding winter has gripped India’s startup ecosystem, mass layoffs have become a regular affair at companies. So far in 2022, startups have laid off over 15,000 employees. Edtech companies have borne the brunt of it as edtech startups alone, including some of the highest-valued unicorns have laid off over 7,000 employees.