Eight Roads Ventures-backed FrontRow has laid off about 130 people (75%) from its workforce, as it rejigs its sales and marketing strategy towards an organic approach in acquiring customers.
The layoff brings down the learning and community platform’s employee count to about 40, co-founder Ishaan Preet Singh told VCCircle. The decision comes months after FrontRow laid off about 145 employees in May, because of tough "market conditions."
"We had to let go a large percentage of our team today. We'll be helping them get placed (I'm sure very quickly," Singh wrote in the Twitter thread on 12 October.
FrontRow is the latest among a slew of edtech startups that have laid off employees, as they focus on extending their runway and conserving cash. Edtech unicorn Byju’s on Wednesday said it will lay off 2,500 employees accounting for 5% of its workforce over the next six month.
“Unfortunately, over the past couple of months, it’s become clear that the business fundamentals were still not working despite our best efforts,” Singh said in a statement.
“As we realized that a sales and marketing led approach to this market didn’t work with our current delivery model, we had to let go a large part of our team,” he added.
Employees from all departments including engineering, product, sales, operations or customer support have been affected by the layoff, but sales and marketing teams have been hit the hardest.
FrontRow has provided a month’s severance to these employees and is helping them get other opportunities.
The decision helps FrontRow to increase its runway to more than two years.
Bengaluru-based FrontRow was founded in 2020 by Singh, Mikhil, and Shubhadit Sharma. It raised $14 million in a Series A funding round in September last year and is backed by investors including Elevation Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, as well as actress Deepika Padukone.
The company offers live classes on non-academic skills from celebrities including Neha Kakkar, Amit Trivedi, Vishal Dadlani, and comedians Biswa Kalyan Rath and Zakir Khan.
The model is similar to that of San Francisco-based upskilling platform MasterClass and works with celebrities, including, who take sessions.
“We continue to be extremely bullish on our product and the problem space, and will be back in a renewed avatar soon,” Singh said. He added that the startup would now be focusing on organic ways to acquire customers.
“This was of course a difficult decision but as we looked at our business, we realised that the push on sales and marketing that we had done was both unsustainable and the wrong way to build the business,” he said.
