Edtech startup FrontRow lays off 75% of its workforce
FrontRow Co-founder Ishaan Preet Singh says the edtech startup will help the people it has laid off get jobs across engineering, product, sales, generalists, operations or customer support roles.
Bengaluru-based edtech startup FrontRow has laid off 75% of its workforce, around 130 employees, Entrackr reported.
“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,” said FrontRow Co-founder Ishaan Preet Singh in a tweet.
“We continue to be extremely bullish on our product and the problem space, and will be back in a renewed avatar soon,” the tweet added.
In May this year, the hobby learning startup laid off about 145 employees—about 30 percent of its workforce—citing tough ‘market conditions’.
The startup said it will help the people it has laid off get jobs across engineering, product, sales, generalists, operations, or customer support roles.
FrontRow’s business model is like San Francisco-based edtech startup MasterClass where celebrities come in and teach courses in their respective fields. The courses offered by the startup include Singing by Neha Kakkar, Comedy by Biswa Kalyan Rath, Fast Bowling by Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Batting by Suresh Raina, and Spin Bowling by Yuzvendra Chahal.
Only last week, BYJU'S also announced that it is taking a jab at celeb-Led courses. Its next session is with India's first chess Grandmaster, Viswanathan Anand, on October 16.
Last year, FrontRow raised $14 million in a Series A round led by Eight Roads Ventures and GSV, with participation from existing investors Lightspeed and Elevation Capital. The round also saw participation from angels such as Vishal Dhadlani, Raftaar, Kunal Shah, Gaurav Munjal, and Farid Ahsan.
At the time of the funding, the startup said it has scaled to over 50K paid learners across 2,000 cities across the world, with users spending over a million hours learning on FrontRow.
While edtech startups enjoyed rapid growth and funding momentum since the start of the pandemic, the sector seems to have lost its mojo. In the last few months, the sector has witnessed layoffs across companies such as BYJU’S-owned WhiteHat Jr, Unacademy, and Vedantu.
On Wednesday, October 12, BYJU’S has said it will be laying off about 5% of its workforce across product, content, media, and technology teams to avoid redundancies and duplication of roles.
Last month, Ronnie Screwvala-backed edtech startup Lido Learning filed for insolvency and bankruptcy with the Mumbai bench of National Company Law Tribunal due to a cash crunch.
(This story has been updated to correct a factual error.)
Edited by Teja Lele