Those guys are not viewed as a serious player. An alsa ran

Growth Manager

I’m surprised why isn’t this a news? More than 500 people are fired with crooked strategies planned by founders. With out financial support.

Classplus firings and lay offs

Classplus firings and lay offs- Grapevine

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

It’s hard time for the community with these kind of asshole founders enjoying limelight with articles and media sitting quiet on this. 
They have fired almost everyone with their crooked and cruel strategy. 
Lame founders who micro manage and build strategies to fire people. They have a layer of puppets under them and make the whole plan to fire the employees- bhai itna mehnat kyu karte ho yaar, seedha muh pe bol do. 
They’re burning investor money and despite being productive laying these foundations for firing. Layoff everyone then, those puppets desite taking tons of bad decisions are being protected just because they lick their ass and pound them to be rockstars. 
They’ve hired hot girls under them for timepass and so called secret parties. Complete BS. 

I’m still surprised itna karne ke bad they are being celebrated what a country we live in.

Classplus firing and fraud

50% layoff at a Bangalore  based health tech startup. Founder had no shame or guilt. Has raised funding recently but chose to fire people again. This is the third layoff in the last 1.5 years. Terrible management, declined variable pay. Severance is to paid in the next 4 months. Just trying to pivot the company into ‘AI’ without any plan whatsoever.

Massive Layoffs at HealthTech Startup

HealthifyMe is the Startup. They are having other PR articles to cover this shit now

Silent Layoffs in Classplus

At its peak Classplus employed about 800 employees which is now down to about 300 but you'd never see this in news because they have been strategically laying off employees on high salaries one by one. Just today 4 people have been asked to leave (that I know of). They very smartly either shift people to textbook and then ask them to leave from there or directly ask them to leave. There's no PIP.
The founders are busy with setting up a new college, for some reason. Most of Classplus core business is just flat, people are asked to just maintain the business. It is losing big clients to competition. I don't know what the outlook of the company looks like but it's not looking good.

Silent Layoffs in Classplus.

Link: https://inc42.com/buzz/unacademy-fires-another-250-employees-to-turn-profitable/

Unacademy fires 250 employees to 'turn profitable'

Pathetic. How many times these so called another layoff?  
 This is pure scam. Such kind of CEOs and CTOs have no right to be at such higher places. These id*ots come to media and give lectures also. There should be some laws in place for layoffs. These People wake up and do layoff. Some get funding and then do layoff and some vice versa. Some fire and then again post about hiring next month shamelessly. It's like a fashion for the. Layoff is no more a last resort these days.  
 These kind of companies will surely go down the drain.  
 CEOs and higher management should be made to disclose their salary and perks so that junior employees should also know how much salary difference is there and is there really a need for cost cutting.  
 Of not, we should atleast stop respecting/ideologise such people. If possible stop using/promoting their products as well. Treat them the way they treat employees.

Software Developer

Operations Manager

Classplus is falling apart. The CTO, CBO and VP-Business have resigned from the company amidst rumours around financial irregularities. Classplus now joins a long list of Indian startups caught amidst fraud/financial irregularities allegations. Classplus was last valued $600Mn in their last funding round and counts Tiger Global, Falcon Edge, Peak XV (formerly Sequoia India) as their investors.

Classplus is going belly up. Big news to come out soon.

Founder

Project Manager

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

Happened at one of the startups in Indiranagar which is into halal personal care products. Recently raised funds upwards of $50m dollars. Huge number os sales team had been asked to go.

Layoffs disguised as resignations

Painful to see so many startups run out of money/ shut down. Is your company doing good?

Founders are not shitposting on the socials, so that’s good I think 😅

Software Engineer

This is an after thought from what happened at Mojocare and Gomechanic. 

I too have been at a startup that was upto similar stuff. Was really large at one point, until everyone figured something was off. 

For me, the first year or so I never got a hint of things. But over time, as I became closer and more trusted by the founders, things became quite clear. Creation of invoices for the sake of it, recording transactions that were anyway happening in the offline world, as transactions on the platform. Basically buying invoices by giving back businesses some of the VC capital as incentives. It was all messed up.

I always thought of doing something once I figured it out, but ended up not doing it. My only action was to find new roles, and leave as soon as I could. 
I remember discussing with friends - should I reach out to journalists? The answer we came to was that it's too risky, even if done anonymously. AND, that people we know would lose their jobs if the reality came out.

Eventually, it did come out. More people lost their jobs, because in that 1 year they ended up growing more and hiring more. Maybe if I'd been a whistleblower earlier, a lot of money could have been saved, so many jobs would not be lost.

A thank you to the people who have been braver than I was.

Rant: Maybe I should have been a whistleblower earlier (Mojocare aftermath)

Analyst

Byju in his townhall yesterday oversold future and more people will be laid off today. 

It is funny because so many business folks who are adding zero value and doing nothing for years are still there 

Senior engineering leaders who are earning salaries of 2 Cr+ are also still there . Poor low level minions are facing all the brunt

150+ Engineers to be laid off from Byjus Today ( Round 4)

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

I have been hearing from multiple friends across organizations in India. Lay offs are not in news but happening silently across boards. Companies are on cost cutting mode. Interesting year ahead

Silent layoffs happenings across organizations

Thank you for sharing this. 
  
 Was not knowing about silent layoffs happening. 
  
 But one interesting thing I have observed is that many organizations are now deliberately making the work environment more pressurised and/or toxic to reduce the headcount so that they don't need to layoff people.

Software Test - QA

PREVIOUS POST GOT DELETED!


Rumours are floating that Unacademy is getting sold by one of its main investors to another Edtech company in their portfolio for just 400 Million dollars, their last round valuation was 3.5 Billion dollars 

But founder Gaurav Munjal said they have 200 Million in bank. Getting confused - Is this a repeat of Byju 2.0?

They have fired the CTO and co-founder Hemesh Singh and Roman Saini ( other co-founder) is also not seen anywhere 

I am worried if more people are to be laid off?

More information in comments sourced via a friend

Unacademy getting acquired?

Journalist

Welcome to News Discussion's Private Community

A subsidiary of Paytm, it has been hit by a string of exits in Senior leadership in last 6 months
CFO: Amit Kapoor, gone
Head of Mutual Funds: Nisharg Golash, gone
Head of Product: Manish Reddy, gone
Head of Growth: Sourav Choraria, gone
Head of Marketing: Divya Chakravarthy, moved internally
Head of Compliance: Sudhendoo Gandhi, moved internally 

You can search these people on LinkedIn to verify.

This is a result of an increasingly toxic work culture where performers are penalized with more work while slackers make merry. This culture is driven from the top with current senior leadership who haven't left the firm have survived by the virtue of sycophancy.

Instead of firing people, they are being asked to resign so that the company is not in news.

I've personally seen this in co's rev teams, a new CTO has been hired from within Paytm. Employees are given 'negative ratings' in appraisal, which the CEO called 'an HR experiment'.

All is not well at Paytm Money

Software Project Manager

I was laid off from big4 with stupid reason is that When I started my carrier I worked in startup in 2015 company now the company is redlisted 2024. 

With this reson there are saying your company is block listed. The main reason is there need to pay variable pay and 23-24 hike to escape. there are using many tricks to layoff the ppl without notice.

Big4 campany layoff without notice

Senior Consultant

15% or close to 200 folks being fired. Reason- revenue per employee to be increased. Revenue not going up so firing employees. Mainly lower level.

Firing at Moglix

Product Manager

Dunzo laying of 20% or 200 employee (approx) majority in tech and product. Is this end of dunzo?

Another layoff coming up at Dunzo🥲

Hope they get their severance packages (I mean salary).

Brand Marketing Manager

Being an investor in equity markets, i was aware of the fact that US market will crash as the free money by fed draws back. I obviously was not able to link this up with the funding dry-ness.

I still expect a founder to be aware of these economic events. I am curious how could the management decide to go for hiring employees only to lay them off a year later. 

If you are a founder, would be happy to know the other side of the story.

What triggered layoffs ?

Let me explain in detail. 
 There are two parts to it and can be broken down basis PnL 
 1. Revenues : Sudden jump in tech( social media, e-commerce, ad tech, fintech, etc) plus supporting industries (chipmakers, laptop / device manufacturer) and the general economy with QE money  
 This impacted forecasts as most firms forecast AOPs basis historically trend (which clearly was an abberation) - this lead to higher HC estimates and rampant and quick hiring  
 Variable costs: CAC, customer support, sales incentive all spiked up as 1. Everyone was putting money (inc bidding price for key words) and 2. Huge customer inflow due to covid (edtech, e-commerce) that required support  
 Fixed costs: While office space / rents remained steady or dropped as % of revenue. This was offseted by fixed tech (software, hardware, people) costs and other costs like (legal, HR, Business, Marketing, supply chain, etc.) the talent was expensive to source plus their need was instant as you already had customer to be served  
 All of this lead to rampant hiring, inflated CTC, rosy forecasts, etc.  
 everyone had turned a blind eye to inflation implications (as for the past 30 Y no one saw a shooting inflation - hence the key decisions makers had now experience & idea about it) - till Dec’21 even FED said inflation is transatory. 
 It was the Ukraine invasion that opened people eyes. Oil went up, food prices went up, UK Europe saw an energy crisis etc 
 This made all the rosy forecast mentioned above duller as 1. Demand was expected to reduce due to higher cost of living 2. Capital became scarce as funding drired 3. Cost of capital (WACC) became expensive as hurdle rate climbed (which is rate of return for bond)  
 Management and investor panicked as they have limited partners (LP) to answer and quess who are these (big pension funds) so people’s pension money had come into startups which were not showing signs of exit for investors. 
 All in all - it is a pain we all have to bare for being exuberant in 2021-2022:

The company had more than 6 layoffs in the past  10 months. Right from office boys to the company COO was affected by the layoff. The recent layoff happened 10 days back, where the company didn't pay their employees a single dime and instead gave them their value less esops to keep their mouth shut. The company is being run by 2 arrogant adamant co-founders along with their 10 other close ally so called the CORE team. The employees were on 30% salary cut since 10 months in the name of deffered and were promised that everyone would get it back with 8% interest on the cut. In every layoff employees were asked to leave within a day or two without even paying them for their notice period. Nobody was vocal about it as the founders had threatened some ex employees that they would make their life miserable and they will find it difficult to get jobs anywhere in future.

The dirty game of Dukaan's layoffs

If we actually think about it, this is even worse than Byju’s. No severance, long-standing pay cuts, and direct/indirect threats.  
 Dukaan deserves to die.

Headcount decreased from 145 to 80 with the target of bringing it to 50. Ceo is a dumbo with no clear understanding of product and future. They launched a new product called Verk which was an AI agent that could do tasks of all kind for you but in background they hired cheap labour to do those tasks manually. Total sham. They aggressively hired across verticals for it and when the bubble burst and investors whopped asses of Ceo and cto (who is a co-founder but just follows master’s orders) by asking them not to use funds raised for a different product to fund this new sham product, they fired people within 2-3 days. Extraordinary performers were let go of just because of office politics and bootlicking by non performing old timers. Btw some founding members also resigned citing future difficulties since this is the 7th pivot they are taking. Founder ensures no firings will happen and then fires folks the next day. Sham company. Beware before joining!

65% staff laid off at Contlo/SuperAgi

Having recently been laid off, these last 2 months was a life changing experience and it taught me a lot of things than any degree or organisation ever did. Some pointers:

1. The people who make the decisions never get punished or are held responsible, its the folks like us who are the first to be pushed out of the door.
2. Its shocking to see the layoffs like firesale, affecting almost each and every company in the IT sector. But it makes you think, did some companies really need to layoff people or did they just do it to inflate their share price and Mcap. The upper management and LT are paid in crores to make the decisions and how could they unanimously fail in such a critical part of business planning.
3. Its all about profits. There's no humanity in any of these companies or rather the folks making the decisions and it doesn't matter if you have been with them for 2 years or 20. If I was responsible for 100 people under me and some of them lost jobs because of the decision I made, I would have stepped down myself and wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing I uprooted the dreams and hopes of not just employees but their families as well, many of whom are sole bread earners of the family. 
4. Treat your employer just as you would treat any brand outside when you go out to shop - treat it like a transaction and nothing else. This layoff also taught me to never compromise about your career and position within an organisation. If the organisation can layoff so many people without a second thought, there's nothing holding you back from joining the next organisation who is offering a better role/compensation. 
5. Be a risk taker. Thankfully I have always been this and this helped me rise quickly in my 6 year career but it's my suggestion to everyone and not just folks affected by layoffs - Never get comfortable in any organisation or any role.
Would love to hear what others think or went through during this difficult period.

Classplus firings and lay offs

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