Executive education platform Eruditus has laid off a section of its employee, joining other edtech unicorns such as Vedantu and Unacademy to let go off staff amid a funding crunch in the ecosystem.
The talent acquisition team of the company has been affected as part of the lay off, The Economic Times reported citing Ashwin Damera, co-founder, Eruditus.
The company sees attrition of about 40 people in a month on average and taking that into consideration the number of people affected by the recent development was 75-80, he added.
He said that the company plans to hire just around 100-150 people this year while it added about 1,300 people in the last 12 months.
Damera also said that the company plans to post a revenue of $375 million in this fiscal ending March 2023 compared to $165 million last year.
A message dropped to Damera did not elicit immediate response.
The lay off comes despite Eruditus having raised significant equity and debt funding since last year.
In August 2021, Eruditus joined the unicorn club after it raised raised $650 million as a part of its latest Series E funding round led by Accel US and Softbank Vision Fund II.
Earlier this year, Eruditus raised $350 million (about Rs 2,696 crore) in debt capital from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s (CPPIB) credit arm to invest in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) to expand its global footprint.
In January, Eruditus’ Damera told VCCircle that the company plans to invest about $1 billion for M&As in 2022.
Eruditus joins multiple startups across sectors that have recently asked employees to go, potentially in a bid to conserve capital in a difficult funding environment. Layoffs have been more common at edtech startups.
In March and April, Unacademy, operated by Sorting Hat Technologies Pvt. Ltd, laid off nearly 800 employees.
Last month, Vedantu laid off 424 employees and learning platform for non-academic skills FrontRow laid off around 30% of its workforce primarily in sales.
Earlier this year, another edtech startup Lido Learning asked 1,200 of its employees to resign, saying that it was looking to wind down its operations amid a funding crunch.
Outside the edtech space, Social commerce startup Meesho, fintech startup OkCredit and business-to-business (B2B) marketplace Yojak have let go off staff.
