100,000 startup workers may have lost jobs in past 2 years

livemint.com:

MUMBAI : The once-booming startup ecosystem in India is facing a much more severe job crisis than expected. According to staffing firms and headhunters, lay-offs at new-age businesses are estimated to be at least three times higher than publicly disclosed. In the past 24 months alone, more than 1,400 companies have handed out pink slips to around 91,000 employees.

Factoring in concealed lay-offs, an indirect way of reducing the headcount, the figure may have touched 120,000, data from tech-focused hiring firm TopHire shows. Prominent firms, including unicorns or startups valued at $1 billion or more such as Byju’s, Unacademy, Blinkit, Meesho, Vedantu, Oyo, Ola, Cars24, and Udaan downsized their teams. While reported lay-offs from publicly available data are at 25,000-28,000, this only offers a partial view considering the reported numbers don’t capture the entire picture.

This is because the liquidity crisis led to funding constraints, compelling several startups in India to adopt austerity measures and trim monthly expenses. With fresh funding becoming scarce, startups were forced to cut marketing expenses, realign cost structures and reduce employee costs. According to a report by PwC India, Indian startups secured $3.8 billion in funding in the first half of 2023, down 36% from a year earlier, marking the lowest fundraising over a six-month period in the past four years.