Tag: edtech india

Lead (Ex-Lead School) – Success Story of India’s No 1 School Edtech Platform!

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations.

The huge COVID-19 outbreak, which caused chaos in the global economy, has also suffocated the education sector. Over 1.5 billion children, or 90% of the world’s primary, intermediate, and tertiary students, were physically unable to attend school.

Educators now demand technology solutions to facilitate remote teaching and learning, which has had a revolutionary effect. However, digital transformation in the education industry is not confined to online education and learning after COVID-19.

Although some educational institutions have embraced technological solutions previously as well, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the necessity of digital transformation in the educational environment was understood in most schools and colleges. Lead provides a technology-based school transformation system that ensures children receive a high-quality education.

Lead was founded in 2013 by Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah to provide innovative school ed-tech options to all stakeholders. The company was founded for students out there who might lead their generation ahead, as the name indicates.

Know more about the company profile, startup story, business model, founders, etc., of Lead by reading this article further.

Lead – Company Highlights

Startup Name	Lead
Legal Name	Leadership Boulevard Pvt. Ltd.
Headquarters	Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Industry	Ed-tech, E-learning
Founders	Smita Deorah, Sumeet Mehta
Founded	2013
Valuation	$1.1 billion
Areas Served	India
Current CEO	Sumeet Mehta
Website	leadschool.in

About Lead (Formerly Lead School)
Lead – Founders
Lead – Startup Story
Lead – Vision, and Mission Statement
Lead – Industry
Lead – Name and Logo
Lead – Business Model, and Revenue Model
Lead – Funding, and Investors
Lead – Growth and Revenues
Lead – Products and Features
Lead – Challenges
Lead – Campaign
Lead – ESOPs
Lead – Acquistion
Lead – Competitors
Lead – Future Plans

About Lead (Formerly Lead School)

Lead (formerly known as Lead School) provides a technology-based school transformation system that ensures children receive a high-quality education. The EdTech company assists in the digitization and transformation of inexpensive private schools to better serve children from moderate and low-income households.

Lead School, as it was earlier known as, rebranded itself to “LEAD”, in July 2021. This successful branding attempt reflects Lead’s “evolution from a chain of schools to one of India’s leading edtech players that transforms traditional schools with its disruptive solutions.”

It creates an integrated system to assist K-12 schools in developing curriculum, teaching methods, obtaining books and other materials from vendors, and better evaluating learning outcomes.

Lead was founded by Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah in Mumbai, Maharashtra, in 2013. Through significant use of technology and a centralized curriculum design team, the organization partners with public and private school owners to assist in curriculum creation and teacher training, allowing kids from impoverished neighborhoods to have access to cheap and high-quality education.

The startup runs a school management software application. It further helps in student learning surveillance, instructor performance, teacher training, and course content delivery. It also offers digital learning resources, as well as traditional readers and workbooks, eBooks, and learning activities. Lead also has a mobile app for Android phones and tablets.

Lead – Products and Services

The Lead platform is designed to help:

The School Owners – Lead helps the schools and school owners to get international standard education, marketing support, and more.
Teachers – Lead helps teachers to become super teachers. It promotes the use of easy and effective solutions to make teaching easy. It also helps teachers extend continuous training and development opportunities, along with helping them access Lead’s national network of excellent teachers.
Parents – Lead helps parents get quality education to secure the future of their kids.

Lead – Founders

Lead was founded in 2013, by the couple, Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, in Mumbai, Maharashtra.

Sumeet Mehta

Sumeet Mehta is Lead’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Sumeet has also worked for Olay Asia Pacific and Vicks & Metamucil Asia Pacific as a brand manager. He formerly worked at Zest Philippines, as an assistant brand manager.

Smita Deorah

Co-founder, Chief Learning Officer, and Chief Operating Officer of Lead, Smita Deorah also founded Sparsh, a non-profit organization whose mission is to impact the lives of young children from low-income communities in the field of education, enabling them to maximize their potential and live life powerfully, primarily by operating K-12 schools in rural and taluka areas and providing access to high-quality education.

Lead currently has an employee strength of 1000+ employees.

Lead – Startup Story

Affordable private schools, which have sprouted up in small communities as a substitute for free and low-quality public schools, are typically just slightly better. These schools, which number between 200,000 and 400,000 students, have poor academic attainment. Unfortunately, neither NGOs nor enterprises working in the field of education technology have much time for them.

That’s the difference Sumeet Mehta (whose parents were also teachers in rural areas) and Smita Deorah have tried to bridge with their Lead’s initiative. Both believed that nobody was resolving the difficulties that smaller towns’ APS faced, so they decided to take action by establishing their independent schools.

When a friend offered them land in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in 2013, they took the leap. They established the Shanti Niketan English School with their own money, starting with just a few learners and gradually increasing to roughly 25. They hired and trained a few local educators. However, Mehta quickly realized that providing a high-quality education to predominantly first-generation students was more difficult than they had anticipated.

Students could recognize the alphabet and recognize letters, but they struggled to put words together in a phrase. Likewise, while they could answer a math question using a formula, they went blank when faced with a question written in English terms.

Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, a couple, founded Lead in 2013. The firm claims to provide cheap private schools with an integrated curriculum and technological solutions, allowing them to deliver advanced education via an online or hybrid structure. Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, started Lead with one school in 2013 with an approach to provide disruptive school edtech solutions for all stakeholders.

The Lead team discovered that kids who were first-generation learners leapfrogged and filled gaps fast if the three primary concerns – a concentration on English, a more adaptable curriculum, and a more trained teacher – were addressed.

The Lead team grew as a result of their efforts paying off. In Maharashtra’s tier-III and tier-IV towns, four new schools have been added. They now operate five schools with around 2000 pupils who pay tuition ranging from Rs 12,000 to Rs 18,000 each year.

They expanded their learning approach to their partner schools in 2016, allowing the firm to impact the lives of even more children. Their well-researched worldwide standard curriculum and integrated solutions are presently being used by over 3,000 Lead Powered Schools.

Lead School rebranded itself in July 2021 and is now known as Lead, with a new logo.

Lead – Vision, and Mission Statement

Lead’s mission and vision statement say, “We’re leading the School EdTech revolution in India as a pioneer by empowering schools across India with our integrated solutions to make international standard education affordable and accessible for every child in the country.”

Lead – Industry

The Covid-19 outbreak has expedited the use of technology in India’s normally slow-paced education sector. Investors began pouring money into a sector that they had previously avoided, with India seeing $0.5 billion in EdTech funding in 2019 and $4 billion in 2020 and 2021.

The EdTech industry has grown at a breakneck pace in recent years, and it has only accelerated since Covid-19. According to research, the EdTech industry was around $750 million in 2020 and would reach $4 billion by 2025. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the wider education business, which is expected to be worth $135 billion by 2020, according to the same analysis. Early students in pre-school through continuous learners wishing to improve their skills are all part of the market.

Lead – Name and Logo

Lead Logo Change – Former Logo (L) and Present Logo (R)

The current name “Lead” marks Lead as a leading ed-tech player, which has grown from being a chain of schools, thereby, pointing out its evolutions.

The new Lead logo marks the upward trajectory of the startup, signified by a starburst. This identifies the excellence and achievement of students, teachers, and schools.

Lead – Business Model, and Revenue Model

Lead is a software-as-a-service company that enables and enhances educational institutions. It’s a full-stack assessment, education, and retraining solution. Lead also has a separate app for parents that allows them to follow their children’s development while also allowing their pupils to learn from home.

Lead operates on a SaaS model, charging schools a set cost per student per year. Adopting Lead pays for itself since it frequently eliminates the need for a slew of other tools like an LMS, textbooks, and administrative software.

Lead also increases school enrolment and helps school revenue. The fact that Lead has a 100% net retention rate proves its unique selling proposition.

Lead – Funding, and Investors

Over the course of six rounds of funding, Lead has raised a total of $184.91 million. The last funding round it raised was worth $19.6 million, and came from Alteria Capital, Stride Ventures on January 11, 2023.

Date	Round	Amount	Lead Investors
Jan 11, 2023	Debt Financing	$19.6 million	Alteria Capital, Stride Ventures
Jan 13, 2022	Series E	$100 million	GSV Ventures, Westbridge Capital
Apr 26, 2021	Series D	$29.32 million	GSV Ventures, Westbridge Capital
Aug 21, 2020	Series C	$27.99 million	Westbridge Capital
Sep 1, 2019	Series B	$7 million	Elevar Equity
Jul 1, 2017	Series A	$1 million	Elevar Equity

Lead – Growth and Revenues

After direct-to-consumer brand Mamaearth and artificial intelligence firm Fractal, Lead happens to be the third business to join India’s unicorn club in 2022. It is also the sixth edtech business in India to achieve unicorn status.

Unicorns are privately held companies with a market capitalization of $1 billion or more. Lead, according to Mehta, works with over 3,000 schools in more than 400 cities. The company has doubled its valuation in the past 9 months, as of February 2022. The firm hopes to reach 2 million kids throughout the country by the start of the next fiscal year. It currently extends its services to over 1.2 million students and to more than 25,000 teachers.

In 2021-22, according to Mehta, the edtech business will have an annual contract value of $80 million (derived from cooperating schools).

“Lead’s growth last year, despite Covid disruptions, underlines its consumer-first approach and deep focus on learning outcomes. We are excited to double down our investment in Lead, to support its mission of transforming the education sector in India,” said Sandeep Singhal, managing director at WestBridge Capital.

Lead is trusted by more than 3 million parents for delivering excellent quality education, and Lead partner schools are present in 400 plus cities with 9000 plus schools and 9000 plus students.

Lead Revenue, Financials and More

Lead operational revenue is increased from FY22 to FY23 which shows that company is making profit and is growing.

Expenses Breakdown

Lead expense has risen from Rs 538.2 crore in FY22 to Rs 617.46 crore in FY23.

Expenses Breakdown	FY22	FY23
Employee benefits	Rs 256.6 crore	Rs 285.44 crore
Purchase of goods	Rs 63.68 crore	Rs 146.77 crore
Impairment loss on assets	Rs 30.57 crore	Rs 34.4 crore
Legal and professionals	Rs 48.57 crore	Rs 26.26 crore
Advertisment and promotions	Rs 76.46 crore	Rs 24.52 crore
Others	Rs 62.42 crore	Rs 100.07 crore

The company’s financial performance in FY23 significantly improved, with ROCE and EBITDA margin going from negative to -104.30% and -72.62%, respectively in FY23. It invested Rs 2.26 in order to generate one rupee of operating income.

FY22-FY23	Date	Amount
EBITDA Margin	-270.18%	-104.30%
Expense/Rs of operation revenue	Rs 4.07	Rs 2.26
ROCE	-57.16%	-72.62%

Lead – Products and Features

Lead has launched various apps and features; some of these are:

Lead Products and features	About	Date
Lead launched "Super 100" programme	The goal of this program is to provide equal opportunity, a fair playing field, and the chance for tier two towns in India to legitimately compete for the title of national toppers.	May, 2022
Lead launches Lead Teacher App	This enables teachers to access more than 200 hours of training and certification materials on instructional techniques, pedagogies, and soft skills	Nov, 2021
Lead launches iHomework	It enables teachers to click once to deliver daily instructions and access a number of ready-made homework solutions.	Nov, 2021
Lead launches Mobile based coding and computational based programme	It is a CCS program with a mobile component for grades 1–8 in more than 2,000 partner private schools in Tier II and higher cities.	July, 2021
Lead launches Bridge Course	The course’s hybrid style (which includes both online and offline modes) is intended to give a thorough review of fundamental ideas and to remove gap.	June, 2021

Lead – Challenges

Lead has faced loads of challenges. In fact, the company is still pushing hard to make its EBITDA positive and turn profitable. This makes Lead join the likes of other Indian edtech startups like Byju’s, Vedantu, Unacademy, and more.

Lead – Campaign

#SaluteTOParents Campaign

SaluteTOParents Lead Campaign

This campaign was launched on September, 2022 it exemplifies the unshakable commitment of parents who go above and beyond to support their children’s dreams, foster self-confidence, and get them ready for a prosperous future.

Campaign to increase enrollment at inexpensive private schools

Lead Campaign

Two TV ads are used in this campaign, one for South India and the other for the rest of the nation. The effective learning outcomes of kids who attend LEAD Powered Schools are eloquently illustrated in these advertisements.

Lead – ESOPs

LEAD has announced an ESOP monetization scheme for its employees, which would be worth around $3 mn, as of February 2022. This ESOP plan is estimated to help the startup retain talent along with helping them gain from the same. Around 20% of its employees own ESOPs and have also offered ESOPs as appraisal bonuses previously.

Lead – Acquistion

Lead has acquired two companies to date. The recent acquisition is Pearson’s India K–12 learning in March 2023.

Acquired	Date	Amount
Pearson – K-12 learning	Jan 6,2023	–
QuizNext	Dec 3, 2020	–

Lead Layoffs

Lead has laid off somewhere between 80-90 of its employees in July 2022, as per some reports. Sales, marketing, and the operations department were among the affected ones.
The company has laid off around 60 employees as per some reports in January 2023. In the second round of layoffs, the tech and product teams have been impacted.

Lead – Competitors

Some of the Lead’s major competitors include:

CodeChef
Embibe
uFaber Edutech
ClassTag
Coassemble

Lead – Future Plans

“LEAD acts as the Intel inside for affordable schools and guarantees 70%+ mastery in all subjects and all grades for low/middle income students and exceeds the guarantee,” said Deborah

In the next school year, Lead anticipates an annual revenue run-rate of $80 million. The firm intends to use the additional funding to improve its product and curriculum. It wants to reach 25 million students in 60,000 schools by the end of 2026, and increase its annual revenue to $1 billion.

With more than 250 million school-aged children, India has been one of the largest global educational markets. Indian parents place a high value on their children’s education because they believe it is the way to economic advancement and a better life.

Several companies, including edtech behemoths Byju’s, Unacademy, and Vedantu, as well as American behemoths Amazon, Facebook, and Google, are striving to reach the country’s students.

“We, at GSV, believe that the mastery guarantee is a revolutionary offering in K12 education space and has the potential to be societally transformational for students. With this strong and unique value proposition and exceptional management team, LEAD is well on its path to becoming the world’s largest and most impactful school edtech company,” she added.

Lead has ambitious plan to reach more than 25 million kids and more than 60,000 schools by 2028. Their services are offered to elite schools in urban areas and large cities, as well as Tier 3–4 towns and villages, with medium–priced institutions serving as their primary clientele.

FAQs

What is Lead?

Lead is an ed-tech company that partners with public and private school owners and provides a technology-based school transformation system that ensures children receive a high-quality education.

Who is the founder of Lead?

Lead was founded by Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah in Mumbai, Maharashtra, in 2013.

Who is the CEO of Lead School (currently Lead)?

The CEO of Lead School (now Lead) is Sumeet Mehta.

Is Lead free?

Lead operates on a SaaS model, charging schools a set cost per student per year.

Which companies do Lead compete with?

CodeChef, Embibe, uFaber Edutech, ClassTag, and Coassemble are among Lead’s major rivals.

September 19, 2023

Innovating Career Preparation: Gaurav Goel, Co-founder and CEO, Toprankers, Discusses the Power of Digital Learning
StartupTalky presents Recap’22. This is a series of interviews in which we conduct in-depth discussions with founders & industry leaders to understand their growth in 2022 and their predictions for the future.

EdTech, or educational technology, is helping to transform the education sector in India in several ways. Some of the ways in which EdTech is helping to improve education in India include accessibility, personalized learning, cost-effectiveness, and skill development.

Many players are entering the Edtech industry and attempting to solve various problems associated with India’s learning system. Overall, EdTech is helping to improve the quality and accessibility of education in India and is playing a crucial role in addressing some of the major challenges faced by the education sector in the country.

According to Statista, the online education market is expected to reach $166.60 billion in revenue by 2023, and show an annual growth rate of 9.37% over the period of 2023–2027, leading to a projected market volume of $238.40 billion by 2027.

For this Interview, we invited, Gaurav Goel, Co-founder, and CEO of Toprankers, and we talked about the growth, challenges, insights, and future opportunities in the ed-tech industry.

StartupTalky: Gaurav, what does your company do? What was the motivation/vision with which you started?

Gaurav: Toprankers is a Bhopal headquartered digital learning platform that enables students to prepare for unconventional careers via holistic guidance and support. The platform offers simulated tests and comprehensive study materials for all candidates appearing for examinations in the field of law, management, design, and other prominent verticals.

Incepted in 2016, Toprankers today is the country’s most preferred digital counseling & preparation platform for careers beyond engineering & medicine. The vision behind the initiative was to provide students with end-to-end assistance in their journey of new-age career courses. To date, Toprankers has successfully enabled more than 3 lakh students to pursue and thrive in the careers of their choice.

StartupTalky: What is/are the USPs of your products?

Gaurav: Our extensive portfolio of career products and services is strategically framed to address the end-to-end requirements of students who are opting for unconventional career options. Be it our hybrid learning model or virtual parent-teacher meetings, we leave no stone unturned to ensure an inclusive learning experience for students. We also boast a team of highly proficient and experienced teachers who excel in passing on their comprehensive knowledge to students in an engaging way.

StartupTalky: How has the ed-tech industry changed in recent years, and how has your company adapted to these changes?

Gaurav: The digital learning space has witnessed a substantial transformation after the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. With schools being shut for more than a year, the pandemic resulted in a multifold growth of digital learning in India and also compelled students, teachers, and parents, to learn about numerous digital tools and adapt to a remote learning environment.

While the offline mode of learning is back in the post-Covid-era, the digital learning space has permanently changed the education landscape in the last couple of years. Toprankers in this regard has unveiled hybrid classrooms for students to help them leverage the best of both online and offline modes of learning.

Besides offering state-of-the-art career products and services, we have adopted a 360-degree approach to mentor our students to help them reach the pinnacle of success.

Top 17 Emerging Edtech Startups in India 2022

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StartupTalkyAshwini

StartupTalky: How do you stay up to date on the latest trends and developments in the ed-tech industry?

Gaurav: For this, our highly experienced and dedicated team ensures that it stays in constant touch with our esteemed customers for their suggestions. We also lay emphasis on understanding the evolving requirements of students and parents and the changing dynamics of the education segment in India.

Furthermore, we regularly participate in education-oriented events across the country and network with industry veterans to garner a detailed understanding of the latest trends.

StartupTalky: What key metrics do you track to check the company’s growth and performance?

Gaurav: To assess the development and performance of our organization, we keep a consistent check on our revenue, growth in the number of students, and the performance of students in prominent, non-conventional tests among others. We also regularly gauge the performance of all our employees and make necessary course corrections to mitigate any bottlenecks.

StartupTalky: What were the most significant challenges your company faced in the past year and how did you overcome them?

Gaurav: The year 2022 has been an inspiration for us. A noteworthy accomplishment for us was to raise a Series A round of funding of $4 million with a renowned VC firm ”Sixth Sense Ventures” which augmented our growth initiatives.

However, for the startup ecosystem as a whole, this year has been a bumpy ride and we too witnessed our fair share of challenges. However, we firmly focused on finding the best solutions for those challenges which enabled us to mitigate them and continue with our success journey.

Here are some challenges that we struggled with in 2022:
- Transitioning from online learning segment to hybrid solutions.
- To ensure a quality learning experience for students in the ever-evolving education sector.
- Since we are headquartered in a tier 2 city like Bhopal, finding and absorbing the right talent also came as a significant challenge for us.
- Another major challenge that we witnessed in the year was creating awareness about non-conventional career options like Law, Management, and Design. These disciplines have low acceptance in India and overcoming the mindset toward deeply rooted domain subjects was the biggest hurdle
- Lastly, ensuring encouraging growth in this competitive and dynamic market is a challenge in itself.
We resolved these challenges by taking necessary course corrections and accomplishing the following milestones:
- We successfully registered more than five million users and secured a Series A
  funding of $4 million from the renowned investment firm ”Sixth Sense Ventures.”
- We also expanded our presence and now boast more than 300 employees across the country of which 48 percent are females.
- Students of LegalEdge by Toprankers have achieved top ranks including AIR 1, 2,3,8, and 10 for the CLAT UG exam. Bhopal-based student Piyush Gupta, AIR 8 secured Rank 1 in Madhya Pradesh while our students also outperformed in the recently conducted AILET 2023 exam securing top ranks including AIR 1,2,9 for the AILET UG exam and AIR 8,9,15 for the AILET PG exam.
- Due to the unprecedented dedication of our team, we garnered exceptional results across all brands. For instance, 12 students qualified in Rajasthan Judicial Services (RJS) in 2022 from our brand Judiciary Gold.
- For Creative Edge, one of our students bagged the highest rank in Madhya Pradesh in JEE B.Arch Exam 2022 and emerged as the regional topper for the state of Madhya Pradesh with a 99.96% percentile.
- Over the years we have been successful in preparing 3 lakh candidates for modern careers.
- Recently a substantial number of students (50+) from our platform secured more than 250 marks in the CUET PG examination.
StartupTalky: What are the different strategies you use for marketing? Tell us about any growth hack which you pulled off.

Gaurav: We at Toprankers have forayed into new domains with our hybrid learning model known as Toprankers Classrooms from where we offer a hybrid mode of learning to students.

We have significantly invested in a high-touch model of learning and are focussing on enhancing student success & mentoring teams. We are also leveraging virtual parent-teacher meetings, boot camps, and much more to boost the confidence of our students and their parents in the online learning domain.

Toprankers ranks among one of the few Edtech companies in the country whose students boast of AIR 1,2,3 in prominent competitive exams in fields such as law, management, etc. Furthermore, our proficient marketing team consistently works on fortifying this position of trust with effective communication and building communities with social media.

StartupTalky: What opportunities do you see for future growth in your industry in India and the world? What kind of difference in market behavior have you seen within states in India?

Gaurav: As per the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2019-20, released by the Union Ministry of Education, popular undergraduate-level programs like BTech (Bachelor of Technology) and BE (Bachelor of Engineering) have noticed a drop of 13.32 percent in enrolments in the last few years. The drop in enrolments is more substantial in postgraduate level programs like MTech, with 33.68 percent of students pulling out of the course.

The survey also demonstrated that about 93.49 lakh students are registered in arts courses at the country’s undergraduate level, making it the most popular course against the science stream.

This indicates that in the coming years, non-conventional career options like Law,
Management and Design will witness rapid acceptance across India.

Talking about the digital learning segment, unlike conventional pedagogy, technology has allowed students to have a unique learning approach, including animations and experiential learning.

The rapid integration of technological applications in the educational sector will make learning more collaborative in the coming times while making students focus on the core of the online content delivered to them. With this, It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that digital learning is the future of education.

StartupTalky: What lessons did your team learn in the past year and how will these inform your future plans and strategies?

Gaurav: Some of the primary learnings that we gained from the last year include:
- Strengthening our student-first approach and including their valuable suggestions in our decision-making.
- Improving our communication with the consumers to facilitate them with the right career discovery options.
- Enhancing consumer engagement with a student-first approach.
- Upgrading our technological infrastructure.
- Finding the right marketing mix to amplify our reach & consumer engagement.
In the coming times, we will emphasize these learnings for robust growth and
transformation of the digital learning space in India.

StartupTalky: How do you plan to expand the Customers, product, and team base in the future?

Gaurav: As learning today is not restricted to physical classrooms, we will deploy a 360-degree approach to educating students including career guidance, end-to-end assistance, personalized learning experiences, and much more in the coming times. To achieve this, our team will take the following initiatives:
- Strengthen the presence of Toprankers’ Classrooms across the country by delivering hybrid learning solutions and maximizing our reach.
- Developing strategic and effective career products to enhance the success rate of students.
- Strengthening our position as an Edtech with outstanding results for the prominent CUET which will play a leading role in transforming the Indian education landscape. In our first endeavor itself, we have delivered over 50 toppers in this test and will continue to reinforce our position in the coming years.
StartupTalky: One tip that you would like to share with people reading this article who want to get into entrepreneurship.

Gaurav: For students and individuals who wish to embark on the journey of entrepreneurship, we would recommend the following:
- Be more resilient
- Make data your priority
- Don’t doubt yourself
- Comprehensively understand the customer and the market segment
- Pick a niche
We thank Gaurav Goel for spending his valuable time and sharing his learnings with all of us.

You can read other Recap’22 Interviews here.
February 10, 2023
List of Top Companies That Have Laid off Their Employees in 2022
In a company, one of the most significant factors is the employees. Without them, one cannot even imagine running a company, no matter how small the business is. Your employees are the main assets of your company. However in 2022, we are seeing, some major, popular companies laying off their employees. Some of these layoffs have stunned the world of business as they are even reaching thousands of employees at once.

The reason for the layoffs varies, from cost-cutting to bad performance to financial difficulties. Some of the companies even faced criticism for their sudden decision. Many people lost their jobs during the pandemic and now these strings of similar layoffs are creating a ruckus in the world. The economic situation of the world is also a big reason for these layoffs. According to reports over 8000 people alone in just the first half of 2022 have been laid off by their companies.

In this article, we will talk about those companies who have laid off their employees and their reason for doing that. Furthermore, we will also talk about the companies that have the possibility to follow the path of laying off their employees. So, without any further ado, let’s get started.

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“Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that.” -Herb Kelleher

HP
Zomato
Amazon
Meta
Twitter
Udaan
Coinbase
Unacademy
Microsoft
BYJU’S
Noom
Clear
Rupeek
Meesho
Better.Com
Ford
Walmart
Robinhood
Vedantu
BlueStacks
TikTok
Netflix
Tesla
CityMall
Cars24
Klarna
MFine
Blinkit
Trell
Furlenco
OkCredit
Lido Learning
Unilever
DiDi
Royal Mail
Nestlé
Tesco
Cineplex
Primark
Conde Nast
Common Reasons for the Layoffs
Companies That Have to Freeze Their Hiring

HP

Founder – Bill Hewlett, David Packard
Founded – 1939
Laid Off – Up to 6,000 Employees (by 2025)

HP – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

The American multinational IT Company, HP has joined the list of top tech companies laying off its employees. HP will lay off 4,000 to 6,000 employees, which is around 10% of its current global workforce of 61,000, over the next three years as a part of its cost-cutting efforts.

The company will also reduce its real estate footprint along with the layoffs. HP’s ‘Future Ready Transformation’ plan is expected to save the company as much as $1.4 billion annually by the end of 2025. It expects the restructuring and other activities to cost around $1 billion.

Zomato

Founder – Deepinder Goyal, Gaurav Gupta, Pankaj Chaddah
Founded – 2008

Zomato Recent Layoffs

November 2022 100-150 (3% of the Workforce)

May 2020 520

Zomato – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

India’s prominent food delivery startup, Zomato, is reportedly planning to lay off its employees on account of its cost-cutting efforts to become profitable. Zomato is going to lay off about 3-4% of its workforce, which currently consists of nearly 3,800 employees. Around 100 Zomato employees have already been affected in the product, technology, catalogue, and marketing areas. Zomato has called it a “regular performance-based churn.” Earlier, Zomato laid off around 520 employees (13% of its workforce) in May 2020 as a result of the business downturn caused by the pandemic.

Amazon

Founder – Jeff Bezos
Founded – 1994
Laid Off – 10,000 Employees (November 2022)

Amazon – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Amazon has also joined the bandwagon of layoffs and is reportedly laying off 10,000 employees in corporate and technology jobs. The company’s layoffs will be focused on its device business, including its Alexa products, and its retail and human resources divisions. The layoffs represent less than 1% of Amazon’s global workforce of more than 1.5 million. It is the biggest job cut that Amazon has ever made in its history.

Meta

Founder – Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew McCollum, Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin
Founded – 2004
Laid Off – 11,000 Employees (November 2022)

Meta – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

On November 9, 2022, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, announced that it is laying off more than 11,000 employees, accounting for nearly 13% of its workforce. It is one of the biggest tech layoffs of 2022. According to Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, the reasons behind the company’s mass layoffs include the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and diminishing ad revenues, which caused Meta’s revenue to be lower than what he had expected.

Meta also plans to cut down its discretionary expenses and continue the hiring freeze through the first quarter of 2023.

Twitter

Founder – Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Noah Glass
Founded – 2006

Twitter Recent Layoffs

November 2022 3,700 employees

July 2022 100 employees

Twitter – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Twitter is an American communications company founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, and Noah Glass on March 21, 2006. Currently headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, Twitter is one of the biggest social media platforms that has been all over the news in relation to one of the biggest acquisitions in modern times ($44 billion), led by billionaire techie, Elon Musk. Twitter laid off 30% of its staff (nearly 100 employees) from the recruiting team in July 2022.

On November 4, 2022, Twitter laid off about 3,700 employees, accounting for nearly 50% of its global workforce, including 90% of employees in India, as a way to cut costs following the company’s acquisition by Musk, which closed on October 27, 2022.

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Udaan

Founder – Amod Malviya, Vaibhav Gupta, Sujeet Kumar
Year – 2016
Laid Off – 350 Employees (November 2022)

Udaan – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Udaan, a B2B eCommerce platform and a proud unicorn startup in India has joined the list of top companies laying off its employees. The startup laid off about 350 full-time employees in November 2022 in order to attain profitability and better efficiency. However, this is not the first time that the startup has laid off its employees. Earlier in June 2022, it laid off 180 employees as a part of its cost-cutting initiatives. The second round of its layoffs this year comes only a week after the startup raised $120 million through convertible notes and debt.

Coinbase

Founder – Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam
Founded – 2012

Coinbase Recent Layoffs

November 2022 60

June 2022 1,100

Coinbase – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Coinbase is an online platform from which you can buy and sell cryptocurrency. The employees of the company work remotely and it doesn’t have any headquarters. It is considered the biggest crypto exchange platform. On a very shocking note, the company laid off around 1,100 of its employees which amounts to almost 18% of its workforce in June 2022. According to the company, the decision has been taken to control and manage the expenses of the company with the ongoing situation in the market.

Coinbase laid off another 60 employees from its recruiting and institutional onboarding departments in November 2022.

Unacademy

Founder – Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, Roman Saini
Founded – 2015

Unacademy Recent Layoffs

November 2022 350 employees

June 2022 150 employees

Unacademy – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

One of the biggest EdTech companies in India shocked everyone this year when they decided to lay off around 600 employees. It was a sudden decision in the month of April. The reasons for this layoff were said to be that the performances of the employees were not good enough.

After that, the edtech giant laid off 150 employees in June 2022. On November 7, 2022, Unacademy conducted another round of layoffs and laid off around 350 employees, accounting for nearly 10% of its workforce of 3,500, as the company tries to cut its expenses and generate a profit.

Microsoft

Founder – Bill Gates, Paul Allen
Founded – 1975

Microsoft Recent Layoffs

October 2022 1,000 employees

August 2022 200 employees

July 2022 1,800 employees

Microsoft – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Microsoft Corporation or Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975. Microsoft is an American multinational technology corporation that is unarguably one of the biggest tech companies in the world today. However, after the company announced that it would be laying off as part of a “realignment”, Microsoft also joined the list of big companies laying off their employees. Besides, it is also important to note that Microsoft became the first tech giant to lay off employees.

Microsoft laid off 1,800 employees in July 2022, and a month later, it laid off another 200 employees. In October 2022, it laid off around 1,000 employees, marking the third round of layoffs in the same year.

BYJU’S

Founder – Byju Raveendran, Divya Gokulnath
Founded – 2011
Laid Off – 2,500 (October 2022)

BYJU’S – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

In October 2022, the biggest Edtech in India, BYJU’S took a drastic decision and announced that it will lay off 2,500 employees or 5% of its workforce. The unicorn, even after reaching a valuation of around $22 billion, decided to sack its employees. The startup’s co-founder and CEO blamed macroeconomic conditions and the startup’s plans to achieve profitability by the end of the current financial year as the reasons behind mass layoffs.

Noom

Founder – Saeju Jeong, Artem Petakov
Founded – 2008

Noom Recent Layoffs

October 2022 500 employees

April 2022 500 employees

Noom – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Noom is a wellness app that deals with tracking the weight of a person and also focuses on mental health. The company in the month of April announced the dismissal of 500 employees. The layoff is done because of the sole reason for changing the coaching model. The strategy of coaching has been changed, and the employees were dismissed for the betterment of the business. In October 2022, Noom laid off about 500 employees, accounting for nearly 10% of its total staff.

Clear

Founder – Ankit Solanki, Archit Gupta, Srivatsan Chari
Founded – 2011
Laid Off – 190 to 200 Employees (September 2022)

Clear – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

India’s leading Fintech SaaS startup, Clear (formerly Cleartax) is another prominent name that has joined the list of companies laying off their employees in 2022. The Bengaluru-based startup laid off 190 to 200 employees across different departments on September 15, 2022. This number amounts to nearly 20% of the company’s workforce. The layoffs are said to be a part of the company’s restructuring efforts to increase its cash flow.

Rupeek

Founder – Sumit Maniyar
Founded – 2015

Rupeek Recent Layoffs

September 2022 50

June 2022 180-200

Rupeek – Top Companies Laying Off Its Employees

Rupeek is a digital gold loan provider company whose headquarters is situated in Bengaluru, India. It is present in over 35 cities. The company laid off about 180-200 of its employees which is 10-15% of its workforce in June 2022. The layoff has been done from different departments and teams. Rupeek gave the reason for cost-cutting for firing its employees, the company is looking forward to making its structure leaner and more compatible. In September 2022, Rupeek once again laid off around 50 employees across different departments as part of its strategy to become profitable in the next 12-18 months.

Meesho

Founder – Sanjeev Barnwal, Vidit Aatrey
Founded – 2015

Meesho Recent Layoffs

August 2022 300 employees

April 2022 150 employees

Meesho – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Meesho, in a sudden and surprising move, fired 150 employees of the company from their grocery business in the month of April. The popular reselling startup in India had its grocery business called Farmiso, which has now been renamed Meesho Superstore. The company is in discussion to merge the grocery store with its main app. The reorganization of the store is said to be the reason for the layoffs. This is also based on their performance in the business till now and their efficiency in adapting themselves to the new form of Meesho Superstore.

A few months later, in August 2022, Meesho laid off more than 300 employees after shutting down its grocery business in India, Superstore.

Better.Com

Founder – Eric Wilson, Erik Bernhardsson, Shawn Low, Viral Shah, Vishal Garg
Founded – 2016

Better.com Recent Layoffs

August 2022 250 employees

April 2022 1,000 employees

March 2022 2,000 employees

December 2021 900 employees

Probably the most controversial layoff that has been done is by Better.com. The company was facing the heat since last year when it fired over 900 of its employees over a single Zoom call in December 2021. In March 2022, it laid off 2,000 employees and about 1,000 employees were fired in April 2022. In this year only, they have laid off almost 3000 of their employees. As per the company, the reason for the layoff is based on the performance of the employees. They have stated that the employees are fired because of their lack of productivity and their inefficiency in work. Since December 2021, the company has fired almost 50% of its workforce.

In August 2022, Better.com conducted yet another round of layoffs, by firing about 250 employees.

Ford

Founder – Henry Ford
Founded – 1903

Ford Recent Layoffs

August 2022 3,000 employees

April 2022 580 employees

Ford – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

The American multinational automobile manufacturer Ford, in the month of April, announced that they are laying off 580 of its US employees. This decision comes right after when the company announced that it will restructure the company and will focus on the making of electric vehicles. The dismissal is mainly done by the engineering department as the making of electric vehicles required different skill sets. Therefore, as per the company, it is done for the future needs of the company.

In August 2022, Ford confirmed laying off around 3,000 employees and contract workers. The job cuts are effective September 1, a spokesman said. The reason behind the layoffs is said to be the change in operations and redeployment of resources as the company plans to embrace new technologies that were not previously core to its operations, such as developing advanced software for its vehicles.

Walmart

Founder – Samuel Moore Walton
Founded – 1962
Laid Off – 200 Employees (August 2022)

Walmart – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Walmart Inc., the popular American retail multinational corporation disclosed that it would be cutting the job roles of hundreds of corporate employees. In its Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters, Walmart reported on August 3, 2022, that it would have to part with nearly 200 of its employees. The departments that would have to bear the brunt are numerous, including merchandising, real estate, and global technology, among others.

Robinhood

Founder – Vladimir Tenev, Baiju Bhatt
Founded – 2013

Robinhood Recent Layoffs

August 2022 700+

April 2022 300+

Robinhood – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Consumer investing and trading service company, Robinhood before announcing its financial performance in the first quarter of 2022 announced that they are going to lay off 9% of its employees that is more than 300 of its employees in April 2022. All these employees were their permanent employees. The company went public last year in 2021 but they face a decline in trading, as per reports, this is said to be the main reason for the dismissal. In August 2022, the company again laid off about 23% of its workforce which might account for more than 700 employees. The Financial Times estimated the number of employees impacted to be nearly 780.

Vedantu

Founder – Anand Prakash, Pulkit Jain, Saurabh Saxena, Vamsi Krishna
Founded – 2011

Vedantu Recent Layoffs

July 2022 100 employees

May 2022 624 employees

Vedantu – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Yes, another popular Edtech startup, Vedantu has laid a good number of employees. Vedantu laid off 424 employees both full-time and contractual, in May 2022. Before that, it laid off 200 of its employees in the same month. The reason for this is to increase their Capital runway as per Vedantu. Apart from that, the reopening of schools and classes being conducted offline, are also said to be the reason for the layoffs of the Edtechs. Vedantu again laid off 100 employees across departments, in July 2022. This was done due to the business restructuring procedure that Vedantu is planning.

BlueStacks

Founder – Rosen Sharma, Jay Vaishnav, Suman Saraf
Founded – 2011
Laid Off – 120 to 150 Employees (July 2022)

BlueStacks – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

BlueStacks was founded by Rosen Sharma, Jay Vaishnav, and Suman Saraf in 2011. Headquartered in Campbell, California, United States, BlueStacks is known as the 2nd largest PC gaming platform in the world that aims to bring PC gamers and the Android gaming library. The pouring demand for Android smartphones has helped the company witness humongous growth throughout the year. This popular Android emulator platform has laid off 60 Indian employees, as per reports dated July 20, 2022. BlueStacks reportedly informed a majority of the employees via video calls on July 18, 2022, that their services would not be needed anymore.

Along with India, the company has also cut down its workforce in many other countries as well, from its offices in London, Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing. The total count of layoffs might be as high as 150 employees as well, ranging between 120-150, according to the reports. The reason behind the layoffs is internal restructuring. BlueStacks has offered 1 month of salary as severance pay to the laid-off employees along with medical benefits, as mentioned by sources.

TikTok

Founder – Zhang Yiming
Founded – 2016
Laid Off – 100 Employees (July 2022)

TikTok – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

TikTok is a short-form video hosting service platform that is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. TikTok has achieved sensational growth in India and across the world for its viral, short-form content, which even resulted in several countries complaining and banning TikTok. The platform is still growing with 8 new users joining TikTok each second. It has over 1 billion monthly active users, as of July 2022.

The popular, controversial ByteDance subsidiary TikTok has reportedly started reducing its workforce by laying off staff working in the EU, EK, and the US. These layoffs, according to Wired and some other news and media networks might affect around 100 TikTok employees, which currently work with a workforce of around 10,000 employees across the US and Europe. The TikTok layoffs are in line with the global restructuring initiatives of the company.

Netflix

Founder – Marc Randolph, Reed Hastings
Founded – 1997

Netflix Recent Layoffs

June 2022 300 employees

May 2022 150 employees

Netflix – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

The biggest streaming platform, in a surprising turn of events, announced that it was going to lay off 150 of its employees across the company in May 2022. Although it was not a huge number, it still became the talk of the town. Some of Netflix’s sudden decisions led to its slower growth of revenue, which was said to be the prime reason for laying off 150 employees. According to Netflix, it was basically done to cut costs at the streaming giant. Netflix recently lost over 2 lakh subscribers and is expected to lose more; this is one of the reasons for its slower revenue growth. In the month of June 2022, Netflix again laid off 300 of its employees, and again the reason was cost cutting.

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Tesla

Founder – Elon Musk, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning
Founded – 2003
Laid Off – 200 (June 2022)

Tesla – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Tesla which was working on its Autopilot advanced driver assistance features has faced a sudden shock. In an unexpected turn of events, Tesla laid off around 200 employees who were working on the autopilot feature in June 2022. This decision comes after Elon Musk asked the company to decrease the headcount by 10%.

CityMall

Founder – Angad Kikla and Naisheel Vardhan
Founded – 2019
Laid Off – 191 (June 2022)

CityMall – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

The three-year-old Ecommerce startup CityMall stuns everyone when it announced the layoff of 191 of its employees in June 2022. The Gurugram-based startup even after raising $75 million, added its name to the list of startups that have laid off their employees in the year 2022. The reason for this layoff as stated by the company is the structural changes that are taking place in the system.

Cars24

Founder – Gajendra Jangid, Mehul Agrawal, Ruchit Agarwal, Vikram Chopra
Founded – 2015
Laid Off – 600 Employees (May 2022)

Cars24 – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Cars24 said goodbye to over 600 employees of the company, which is 6% of their workforce. The fired people include employees from different departments and roles. The company has not provided any special reason for the layoff and has only stated that it is based on the performance of the employees. Every year employees are laid off if they are not providing their very best. Cars24 decision of firing its employees comes at a time when the company is looking to expand itself globally.

Klarna

Founder – Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth
Founded – 2005
Laid Off – 700 (May 2022)

Klarna – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Klarna is a Swedish fintech company that deals with online financial services. In a pre-recorded video the CEO of the company forwarded the news to the employees that the company will lay off 10% of the global workforce. Almost 700 employees were affected by this decision in May 2022. The CEO said that the Ukraine-Russia war and a likely recession are the reason behind this drastic step.

In September 2022, the company disclosed over a video meeting that it is planning another round of layoffs in an attempt to “reflect” its new and “more focused nature.” According to Klarna, the new round of layoffs will affect less than 100 employees, globally.

MFine

Founder – Prasad Kompalli, Ashutosh Lawania
Founded – 2017
Laid Off – 500 (May 2022)

MFine – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

MFine is a digital health platform based in Bengaluru that provides services like doctor consultations, diagnostic tests and others. The health platform’s sudden turn of events laid off almost 500 employees of the company in May 2022. It is almost 50% of their workforce. The company hired employees even in the month of April but after the struggle to raise funds started increasing, it decided to lay off its employees.

Blinkit

Founder – Albinder Dhindsa
Founded – 2013
Laid Off – 1,600 approx (March 2022)

Blinkit – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Blinkit, previously known as Grofers is an online grocery shopping platform, recent in the month of March it laid off some of its employees. It is said to be 5% of their workforce which is about 1,600. The layoff has been done in mostly three cities, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai. The company has spent almost INR 600 Crores to focus on their 10 minutes delivery offering. Apart from laying off their employees, the online grocery platform is also delaying the payments of the vendors. The main reason for the layoff is said to be cost-cutting.

Trell

Founder – Agrawal, Sachan, Arun Lodhi, Bimal Kartheek Rebba
Founded – 2016
Laid Off – 300 (March 2022)

Trell – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Nothing seems to be going right for the Social commerce startup Trell. Amidst its investigation of its alleged financial irregularities, it is said to have decided to fire 300 of its employees almost 50% of its workforce. The situation that has led to this decision is mainly the investigation that is going on by EY India. However, the company gave out the reason for restructuring and strengthening the company for the layoff. The roles that are not needed are cut off from the company.

Furlenco

Founder – Ajith Karimpana
Founded – 2012
Laid Off – 180 (March 2022)

Furlenco – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Furlenco is a startup that provides rented furniture to its customers. The company is said to lay off about 180-200 of its employees. It is also reported that the startup has stopped all their operation in the cities like Kolkata, Jaipur, Chandigarh and Mysuru. The company has given restructuring as the main reason for the firing of their employees, the staffs mostly belong to the customer support and grievance management departments.

OkCredit

Founder – Gaurav Kumar, Aditya Prasad, Harsh Pokharna
Founded – 2017
Laid Off – 40 (February 2022)

OkCredit – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

OkCredit is a digital ledger company and on a shocking front, the company laid off around 40 of its employees in the month of February 2022. The organisation said that the reason for the sudden decision was because of the company’s changes in their priority. This has led to the restructuring of the company and the roles of the employees in the company which has led to the dismissal of several employees from the company.

Lido Learning

Founder – Sahil Sheth
Founded – 2019
Laid Off – 150+ Employees (February 2022)

Lido Learning – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

The employees of Lido Learning faced a shocking and terrible situation when about 150 to 200 of them were laid off in the month of February 2022. Lido Learning has been backed by some of the most prominent investors like Anupam Mittal and Mukesh Bansal. The company also raised over $10 million in the month of September 2021. Lido Learning founder Sahil Sheth informed the employees that because of facing some financial difficulties, the company wouldn’t be able to pay their salaries. Apart from that, some employees were asked to look for other jobs.

Unilever

Founder – Antonius Johannes Jurgens, Samuel van den Bergh, Georg Schicht
Founded – 1929
Laid Off – 1,500 Employees (January 2022)

Unilever – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Unilever, the consumer goods multinational company revealed its plan to cut 1,500 jobs from the company in January 2022. This will be valid worldwide, the decision comes after its failure to buy the consumer health division of GlaxoSmithKline. Unilever has decided to opt for a more competitive operating model and reorganize the company for its growth and to be more responsive to consumer trends.

DiDi

Founder – Cheng Wei, Zhang Bo, Wu Rui
Founded – 2012
Laid Off – 3000 (February 2022)

DiDi – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

Chinese Ridesharing service DiDi decided to lay off 20% of its workforce in the month of February. Approximately 3,000 employees lost their jobs because of this decision. The reason for this decision is said to be the regulatory pressure that the company faced since an investigation was launched against the company last year. With its shares facing a huge decline and the company suffering a loss, the decision was taken to analyse the whole matter.

Royal Mail

Founder – Henry VIII
Founded – 1516
Laid Off – 700 (January 2022)

Royal Mail – Top Companies Laying off Its Employees

The postal company of Britain, Royal Mail has been present for centuries. The company in January 2022 decided to cut off 700 employees of theirs. This decision comes after the company faced problems because of Covid, which has led to delays in deliveries. The performance of the postal company was criticised, therefore to bring change and restructure the company, they decided to fire their 700 employees.

In October 2022, the company announced that it is planning to cut down its workforce by around 10,000 by August 2023. Royal Mail attributes this decision to ongoing strikes and rising losses at the company.

Nestlé

Founder – Henri Nestlé
Founded – 1866
Laid Off – 104 (March 2022)

Nestle Logo

Nestlé is a Swiss multinational food and drink conglomerate. In a sudden decision, the food processing giant has decided to close down its Sweet Earth food facility that is in California. This has led to the laying off of 104 employees in March 2022. The decision comes after, the plant-based meat company was seen to have negative growth and experience losses. Nestle acquired Sweet Earth Food Facility in 2017, it sells plant-based meat food items.

Tesco

Founder – Jack Cohen
Founded – 1919
Laid Off – 1600 (February 2022)

Tesco Logo

Tesco is the biggest supermarket chain in Britain, now the supermarket chain is looking for a major overnight transformation. They are mostly shutting down the meat and fish counters of 300 stores because of low demand. This decision may lead to the layoff of 1600 employees of Tesco. The job cuts are followed as the supermarket chain is on the verge of reorganising itself.

Cineplex

Founder – Ellis Jacob, Garth Drabinsky, Gerald W. Schwartz
Founded – 1999
Laid Off – 5000 (January 2022)

Cineplex Logo

Cineplex is a movie theatre chain in Canada. The pandemic situation has created many problems throughout the world, the theatre chain also faced a problem due to this. The company in the month of January announced that it was temporarily laying off 5000 employees of their as theatres are shutting down in Ontario. This decision comes after the surge of the Omicron variant of Corona in the country. However, the layoff is said to be a temporary one.

Primark

Founder – Arthur Ryan
Founded – 1969
Laid Off – 400 (January 2022)

Primark Logo

The UK-based multinational fashion retailer Primark has decided to cut off 400 employees of theirs in the month of January. As per reports, the decision was taken to simplify the management structure. As the omicron variant surged and the inflation seems to get serious, the sales of Primark were hit. Now to restructure the company, the layoff was needed.

Conde Nast

Founder – Condé Nast
Founded – 1909
Laid Off – 90% of the Workforce

Conde Nast Logo

Conde Nast is one of the biggest global media companies, home to some iconic brands like Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair. On a quite shocking front, the Magazine giant announced that they will lay off 90% of employees in Russia and will halt the distribution of Vogue Russia and other publications of theirs. The biggest reason for this decision was said to be the Ukraine invasion by Russia. The company has cut off its term permanently with Conde Nast Russia.

Common Reasons for the Layoffs

Big companies and organisations are facing problems and many of them are laying off their employees in response to that. There are multiple reasons, varying from company to company. Some of the common reasons for the layoff are:
- Companies are not able to adapt to the situations after the lockdown and pandemic.
- Inflation is on the rise again.
- Companies facing financial difficulties.
- The slowdown of funding in the business world.
- The Ukraine invasion by Russia has led many companies to stop doing business with the latter.
- The inefficiency of employees.
- Restructure and modernisation of a company.
Companies That Have to Freeze Their Hiring

With the economy of the world facing jeopardy and several other reasons, a number of companies have frozen their hiring and they are:
- Meta has frozen their hiring and it is said to be lasting through the first quarter of 2023. The main reasons, the company has given are the industry-wide downturn and privacy data changes.
- In May 2022, Wayfair froze their hiring for 90 days and again the reason is the situation with the economy of the world.
- Twitter freezes their hiring and many of its top employees are getting fired, the sole reason is the ownership change of the company, as it now belongs to Elon Musk.
- Google is another company that has slowed down its hiring, though it has not frozen its recruitment yet, as mentioned by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in the first week of July 2022.
Conclusion

Various companies are taking the step of firing their employees as mentioned above the reason varies from economic conditions to the pandemic to the restructuring of the company, and even the inefficiency of the employees. Apart from all these, there also seems to be a slowdown in funding and pressure by investors to make the company more and more profitable. With the current global economic situation, it seems like the worst is yet to come.

FAQs

What is a layoff?

A layoff simply refers to the termination of an employee of a company. It occurs due to business-related reasons and not because of the employee’s fault. A company may lay off a single employee or multiple employees at the same time.

Why Companies are laying off their employees?

Companies are firing employees for various reasons that vary from economic conditions to the pandemic to the restructuring of the company, and even the inefficiency of the employees.

Which Indian startups are laying off their employees?

Many Indian startups are laying off their employees in 2022, including Udaan, Unacademy, BYJU’S, Vedantu, Meesho, Cars24, Clear, Lido Learning, and more.

Is Meta laying off its employees?

On November 9, 2022, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, announced that it is laying off more than 11,000 employees, accounting for nearly 13% of its workforce.

How many Twitter employees were laid off?

On November 4, 2022, Twitter laid off about 3,700 employees, accounting for nearly 50% of its global workforce, including 90% of employees in India, following the company’s acquisition by Elon Musk.
November 24, 2022
Notebook: Kolkata-Based Edtech Startup Making School Education Interesting
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Notebook Company.

Internet is steadily revolutionizing the Indian education system. Gone are the days when students used to pass hours in the library searching for that one reference book. Now every topic and every subject is available online. Furthermore, with more and more Edtech companies coming up, both the teaching and learning process has become easier.

Many startups have come up in India with innovative ideas in the Edtech sector. Notebook is one such Edtech Startup based in Kolkata. Notebook company’s vision is to enable access to high-quality education for every child. It strives to establish a benchmark in educational content quality for the Indian school curriculum.

Notebook – Company Highlights

Startup Name Notebook

Headquarters Kolkata

Founders Achin Bhattacharya, Subhayu Roy, and Abhishek Dutta

Industry EdTech

Founded 2018

Website notebook.school

Notebook – About
Notebook – Industry Details
Notebook – Founders and Team
Notebook – Startup Story
Notebook – Name and Logo
Notebook – Business and Revenue Model
Notebook – Funding
Notebook – Growth
Notebook – Challenges
Notebook – Competitors
Notebook – Advisors and Mentors
Notebook – Work Culture
Notebook – Awards
Notebook – Future Plans

Notebook – About

Notebook is an edtech startup based out of Kolkata. It provides educational audio-visual content based on every topic in the school curriculum, as a teaching aid.

Notebook is guided by the following core beliefs:
- Every child is talented and equally capable.
- Society will improve as a whole if only every child can be provided with access to high-quality education.
- At the end of the day, all learning is self-learning. If content can inspire curiosity, it would have served its purpose.
- Creativity inspires more creativity.
Beyond its commercial presence, Notebook exists to empower positive social change. Its vernacular feature allows children to learn their syllabus in their regional languages. The videos include instructor-led components as well as graphic visualization elements to reinforce storytelling. Hand-drawn illustrations, soothing music, and well-thought-out creative design augment the Storytelling and enhance understanding and retention of topics.

Notebook company is also engaged in dialogue with the Education departments of various countries, to digitize education in these countries. There are on-going discussions with the governments in South Asia and GCC regions, and some other countries where the government is trying to serve different issues in their traditional education system through the distribution of digital content.

Products

The product is a self-learning environment. In its current shape and form, it provides videos and textual content that explain topics from school syllabi. Notebook has started with CBSE and will be adding more boards soon. It is available on the web, Android app, and iOS app.

Through its products Notebook company aims to bring out the curiosity among students and engage them. As in class holding the students’ attention for a long time is a challenge for the teachers, Notebook has attempted to create the audio-visuals in such a way that seems interesting to the students. Currently the course available in Notebook is English for CBSE 8th, 9th and 10th standard. Study Notes and Solved Questions are also included in the course.

The platform also employs Machine Learning to offer personalized learning pathways to the students. The back end will keep learning through usage patterns and use them in the future to recommend content to students based on individual learning needs.

Technology Used

Notebook operates on the Google Cloud and delivers video streams through the same pathway as YouTube. It has implemented best-in-class DRM to protect against piracy.

Notebook – Industry Details

According to a report by Google and KPMG, the online education industry in India will grow from $247Million to $1.96 billion by 2021, There are 260 million school students in India as per U-DISE reports. This provides a massive opportunity to deliver a high-quality product.

According to Cisco, just as with the advent of mobile phone connectivity has seen exponential growth from 3% to almost 100%, likewise, the smartphone will increase the computer penetration from 12-13% to 60-70%. As such, with Smartphone now being affordable and available to everyone, online education is no longer dependent on the computer.

Notebook – Founders and Team

Achin Bhattacharyya, Subhayu Roy and Abhishek Dutta are the co-founders of Notebook.

Achin Bhattacharyya

Achin Bhattacharyya – Co-founder of Notebook

Achin Bhattacharyya worked as a Chartered Accountant prior to the inception of Notebook. He worked with some of the best consultancy firms in India and abroad. His last stint was with Deloitte as a Director, prior to which he worked with KPMG, PwC, GE, and others, both in India and overseas. Achin takes care of overall strategy, content design, and finance at Notebook. Achin Bhattacharyya is the Co-founder and CEO of the company. An avid reader and passionate traveller himself, Achin has a keen interest in Economics, History, and Literature and Philosophy. He is a regular speaker at various forums and also contributes articles to numerous publications. He is also on the board of some of the most renowned corporates and contributes significantly to brand strategies.

Subhayu Roy

Subhayu Roy – Co-founder of Notebook

Subhayu did his Engineering from RVCE, Bangalore, and his MBA from TAPMI, Manipal. He had worked with L&T in Construction, and then with OnMobile in Africa for 4 years setting up a mobile content business. He headed Perform Group (UK)’s South Asia business before leaving and starting up Notebook. He also worked previously with VerSe Innovation, the parent company of Josh and Dailyhunt. Subhayu looks after Marketing of the edtech startup, Technology, and Product at Notebook.

Abhishek Dutta

Abhishek Dutta – Co-founder of Notebook

Abhishek is a qualified Chartered Accountant with 16 years of working experience in the corporate world. He has led large teams (400+) for delivering finance and accounting services to Fortune 500 companies.

The Co-Founders – Subhayu and Abhishek, bring valuable additions in terms of expertise and experience to Notebook.

The leadership at Notebook company believes that universal access to high-quality education is the only sustainable way to achieve social upliftment. To this end, Notebook has been proactively partnering with Government departments and Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) across the globe. Currently, there are 50+ members of the startup team.

Notebook founder

Notebook – Startup Story

It was over the course of a discussion that we realized that an ‘Over The Top (OTT)’ approach in education was possible.

In March 2017, Achin was visiting Subhayu in Delhi. They were having a general discussion on the various social evils present in society and how these evils can be eradicated through education. Subhayu was working in the Sports content space and was witnessing the OTT phenomenon. Soon the idea stuck in their mind that they can make education easily available through the OTT approach.

After this, Subhayu and Achin spent a year traveling across India and abroad – visiting students, teachers, universities, academicians across various places and different strata of the society to identify the pain points.

In March 2018, they started developing content, which they kept sharing with teachers and students at every step for feedback. They gave leaflets to schools, actively courting criticism!

Both Subhayu and I have spent years in the Corporate world. Managing time effectively is second nature to us. We spend time and effort in finding the right people. Once we do, we empower them, trust them and watch as they take the lead on things. – Achin Bhattacharyya, CEO of Notebook

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Notebook – Name and Logo

When we started out, we had a few names on the board to choose from. Given that we needed to be attractive to school students, we were thinking of names that were fun, tech-oriented, used intelligent wordplay. – Achin Bhattacharyya, CEO of Notebook

Finally, Achin and Shubhayu came up with the name ‘Notebook’. It was simple, direct and known. Even in logo and colours, the company kept things the same way – simple and direct. The choice of the Golden yellow colour stood for excellence and it is also believed to be Goddess Saraswati’s colour.

Notebook- logo

Notebook – Business and Revenue Model

Notebook is a subscription-based service operating on a Freemium model. It is India’s first after-school digital learning portal. Schools get access to concise and engaging high-quality audio-visual teaching aids for classrooms, and students get individual personalised access to the same content on their personal devices so that they can study at their convenience. Since its commercial launch in September 2019, the Notebook app has been downloaded and used by more than 90,000 students from across India, and several schools have already started implementing Notebook videos in their classrooms.

The company believes that its content quality is its greatest marketing asset. As such Notebook is offering part of the content for free.

According to Achin and Suvayu, Notebook’s USP is the content and pricing strategy. The content design has been consciously done in a way that engages the student.

We have devised an augmented storytelling technique that invites the student to imagine along with the video, and this shows great results in understanding and retention. – Achin Bhattacharyya, CEO of Notebook

Notebook is available at a price of Rs 1,999 for all subjects for a month and Rs 9,999 for an annual subscription with unlimited access.

Achin and Suvayu felt the necessity for the product to be made affordable to the average Indian parent, and this is what they have modeled into Notebook’s subscription.

Notebook – Funding

Notebook is currently bootstrapped startup. It has not received any funding yet.

Notebook – Growth

Notebook has served over 2.3 million users as of November 2021. It had over 300,000 users before the lockdown and increased to 2.32 million in 2021.

Notebook – Challenges

The greatest challenge faced was establishing a balance between content and pedagogy. The content had to be comprehensive and yet crisp. The pedagogy had to be engaging without distracting. So there were quite a few balances to strike.

Creating high-quality content ensuring that the students find it engaging and also which is easily memorable was a challenging task. However, Achin and Subhayu actively discussed the issues, expectations, and requirements with the teachers and students across the country. On the basis of the feedback received, Notebook was able to come up with an easily comprehensible and memorable design for the content.

Support from family and friends is the highest asset during challenging times.

Both of us have been fortunate that our family and friends have believed in us right from the get-go. Every person we told about our decision felt that we were doing the right thing. It has been immensely encouraging to have so many people put their faith in us. – – Achin Bhattacharyya, CEO of Notebook

Notebook – Competitors

There are quite a few companies that are registered as Ed-tech with the ROC. However, very few are known and regularly used by students. Byju’s has done an outstanding job in Maths and Science, and in building a self-learning habit. Others like Meritnation and Toppr have been around for a while, and have their own content philosophies. They believe that the true competition is with rated content, pirated videos, and other distractions that students today has access to.

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Notebook – Advisors and Mentors

Notebook is growing under the active mentorship of –
- Mr. Ashok Ganguly – Former Chairman, CBSE for 8 years.
- Dr. Mrs. Minakhi Das – Former Chief Controller of Exams, Odisha Board
Notebook – Work Culture

I believe that the best way to treat any employee is to not treat him or her as an employee. – Achin Bhattacharyya, CEO of Notebook

The Notebook team is like a close-knit family where the team members continuously help and support each other. Notebook has provided accommodation facility to its team members who are from outside Kolkata. This is a caring gesture and it has helped to improve the work efficiency of the team members.

Notebook – Awards

Notebook bagged the awards for the Best Website and the Best App at the World Digital Marketing Congress – two awards in 2020 at The Taj Lands’ End, Mumbai.

On winning the awards, Achin Bhattacharyya, CEO, and Founder of Notebook said, “From its very inception, Notebook has been driven by a vision to help students learn. The content design, product development, research, and technology have all stemmed from this core value. It is immensely encouraging for the whole team, and me personally, to be recognised by such an eminent forum for our efforts. India has seen a mushrooming of Edtech products in recent times, and many of them believe in aggressive overselling. We, however, have always believed in the quality of our content and the intuitive nature of our product and this has been such a wonderful validation of that approach. Our App and Website are both embodiments of the essential values that Notebook embodies – respect for every individual, inclusion in all our actions and immense pride in the work we do. I am humbled by this recognition, and attribute it to two things – our ability to precisely and accurately assess the students’ learning needs, and the tireless effort from our entire team. Accolades like this provide us with greater impetus to work harder.”

Notebook – Future Plans

It is just the beginning for Notebook company, and Achin and Subhayu are planning to make things big. Notebook’s future plans include-
- Creating content in 10 vernacular languages apart from English.
- To provide educational aids for dyslexic and visually challenged students.
- To bridge the gap in the school education system in different subjects and different boards.
FAQs

What is Notebook?

Notebook is a digital learning platform that combines video and text content to deliver learning materials according to Board curricula.

Who is the founder of Notebook startup?

Achin Bhattacharyya, Subhayu Roy, and Abhishek Dutta are the co-founders of Notebook.

When was Notebook founded?

Notebook, the Kolkata-based startup was founded in 2018.

Who is the CEO of Notebook?

Achin Bhattacharyya is the Co-founder and CEO of Notebook company.

Who are the competitors of Notebook?

Top competitors of Notebook startup are:
- Byju’s
- Toppr
- Meritnation
July 22, 2022
Why Is the Indian Edtech Market Under Heavy Loss in 2022?

One of India’s Edtech giants BYJU’s recently laid off its 500 employees. Similarly, other well-recognized Edtech companies like Unacademy, Vedantu, Whitehat jr., etc. have also handed pink slips to hundreds of their employees in the latest Edtech crisis.

So, is the Indian Edtech market actually coming to its end? When did it start to crash and what are the causes? Which of the brands will survive the situation?

In this blog, we will find the answer to all these questions.

The Inception of the Indian Edtech Market
Growth of the Edtech Industry in India
Effect of the Pandemic on the Edtech Market
The Post-pandemic Struggle of Edtech Companies
Who Will Survive the Edtech Race?

The Inception of the Indian Edtech Market

The coaching centers have been a part of our education system for a long time. Beginning with the small tuition classes with 5-10 students to the big coaching institutes with hundreds of students, this business has travelled a long way.

Mostly, the inability of the school curriculum to prepare students for competitive examinations and the lack of well-trained teaching staff are considered to be the reason for the advent and proliferation of these coachings.

Well, whatever the reason be, the truth is that today coaching centers have become an indispensable part of the Indian education system.

These coaching centers charge high fees, sometimes even higher than the school fees for an entire year, to prepare the students for different exams. They offer classes, study material, question banks, test series, and even hostel facilities for the students.

Several cities have emerged as coaching hubs for different examinations, such as Kota for IIT-JEE coaching, or Delhi’s Rajendra Nagar for UPSC coaching.

In continuation of this, with the arrival of new technology, online coaching centers came into the picture. The major advantage of these Edtech companies over offline coaching centers was their cost-efficiency.

They offered the same course to the students as the offline coaching center but at a very low price, comparatively. It was owing to the lower expenditure needed to run these businesses.

Actually, to run an offline coaching center one has to spend a humongous amount of money on infrastructure, teaching staff, admin, support staff, housekeeping, electricity & water bill, etc.

Other than this these coaching centers also have to take care of marketing through billboards, seminars, etc. which further escalates their running cost. In the end, students are the ones who have to pay for these expenses in terms of the high fees charged by these institutes.

On the other hand, the online coaching centers do not have to spend money on infrastructure, extra staff, or other facilities. All they need are a few experienced teachers who would record the subject-wise lectures for them.

So, even for the teachers instead of regular monthly payments they only had to pay them once. These companies also hire the teachers on a profit basis to organize doubt-clearing sessions for the students.

This made their functioning expense go really low. Moreover, back when these companies actually started, the digital modes of marketing, such as YouTube or Instagram, were cheaper. Due to this, they were also saving on their advertisements and marketing costs.

However, owing to the soaring internet costs this market did not grow much until 2017 when “Jio” entered the Indian telecommunication industry. With its extremely low-cost internet connection, Jio revolutionized the way the coaching industry of India functioned.

Growth of the Edtech Industry in India

Owing to the availability of cost-effective internet connections, this led to the rise of digital coaching institutes in India. The market of these institutes was not restricted to a particular city or zone. They could actually approach any student across the country.

Moreover, with the pre-recorded lectures they could even sell customized courses or subject-specific courses to students. If a student only wanted to study Physics, he/she was not compelled to pay for other subjects as well. Therefore, initially, the Edtech market required ultra-low working capital and was a high-profit margin business with boundless potential to scale.

Due to all these advantages, a large number of investors with billion-dollar funds approached these companies even turning many of them into unicorns.

VC Investments in Indian Edtech Startups

But, here is the twist, as the entry barrier to starting an Edtech company was quite low the competition started to increase. The cost for course making was low and the selling was easy. This invited countless individuals to enter the field.

This sudden increase in competition led to a number of other changes in the digital market. Owing to the increased number of advertisements for similar products, the cost per conversion escalated multiple times.

This drastically increased the cost of investment in the Edtech business as the margin between investment and profit shrank to become thinner. This led to incurring losses in most of these companies.

Effect of the Pandemic on the Edtech Market

Although COVID-19 brought the entire world into turmoil, bringing several challenges for the entire human community, this pandemic was bliss for the Indian Edtech companies.

With the shutting down of schools and offline coaching centers, the Edtech industry saw its boom in 2020. The edtech companies utilized this as an opportunity to habituate customers to online learning.

Resultantly, while they offered more discounts, more free sessions, and other free services to the customers, they also hired more staff and gathered more funding for themselves.

This was the time these companies invested all their energy and resources to bring the Edtech market to its hype as almost all the students were using online classes.

The Edtech companies at this point exploded like no one could have imagined inviting more players to join the field.

The Post-pandemic Struggle of Edtech Companies

Later in 2021 or the beginning of 2022, the pandemic started to fade away leading to the re-opening of schools, coaching centers, and other institutions. As the students rejoined their respective institutes the resources gathered by the Edtech companies were no longer required.

The students got involved in their offline activities as earlier, preferring a physical classroom over the virtual one. This led to the major collapse of the Edtech industry in India.

Finally, the companies began to suffer heavy losses and had to fire the surplus staff including both the teachers as well as the sales team. But, is this Edtech crash occurring for real?

Unfortunately, the answer is yes. So, the next question appears, who will survive it? To get the answer we have to know who all are the participants in this struggle.

Who Will Survive the Edtech Race?

There are three types of players in the Edtech market. First are the super-brands like BYJU’s, Unacademy, etc. These companies have made a name and reputation in the market which is exceptional and considered quite reliable by the customers.

Second, are the companies with huge funding with which they are able to promote and advertise their products much more efficiently and effectively.

Third are the personal brands such as Study IQ, Physics Wallah, etc. These are the brands that have grown organically on the basis of their content instead of marketing. These are the most powerful and most profitable players in the field.

Amongst the three categories, the first ones to get out of the race are the high-funding companies. Even when these companies are able to attract customers with their advertisements, the lack of content and inability to produce results causes trust issues with customers. This causes an early detachment of customers ensuing huge losses for these companies.

The super brands have no doubt made an irreplaceable image in the market and have earned trust with their services. So, it is expected that they will remain a part of the industry maybe but will have to incur some losses. However, the top players in the game will always be the personal brands. They will always remain profitable and if they stay on the right path they could even become bigger than the super brands one day.

The reason for this is that they have a brand value like nobody else. It separates them from the commoditized Edtech market. As they have gained this place due to their quality content and customer trust there is the least possibility of collapse.

Moreover, they have incredible distribution channels with their customers being the source of their publicity. They are able to connect students without even running any ads so their acquisition costs are very low. Therefore, they have an edge over their competitors and run their businesses without even funding.

Conclusion

Presently, the Edtech market in India is under heavy loss. The industry is at its worst and facing a huge crisis. The reason for this is the re-opening of schools, universities, and offline coaching centers.

However, like any other market, the best players in the field who have gained the trust of the customers and built a reputation for themselves will always stand strong with a profitable business, surviving the highs and lows.

FAQs

What is the future of EdTech in India?

Edtech is growing rapidly in India and is estimated to reach around $30 billion in the next 10 years

How many EdTech companies are there in India?

There are nearly 9,043 EdTech startups in India.

How big is the EdTech market in India?

The market valuation of the Indian Edtech industry is $2.8 billion and is expected to reach $10.4 billion by 2025.

July 13, 2022
The Genius Marketing Strategy of Byju’s – How It Built a Billion-Dollar Business?

If I ask you to name an e-learning app where students can attend live classes, watch pre-recorded videos and give tests, most of you will surely name Byju’s. And why not! Byju’s is India’s most famous edtech decacorn valued at $22 billion.

Currently, the app has 10 Cr+ downloads on the Play Store with students spending 71 minutes on average time on a daily basis from 1700+ cities.

The app has 6 million paying subscribers with an 85 per cent renewal rate. All these statistics show how much Byju’s has grown over the years. In India, the education system is majorly based on an offline learning model. Then how did this company popularise the e-learning concept?

In a country like India where parents hate mobile phones and the internet in the hands of their children, how did this company make both students and parents understand the benefits of studying online?

The answer to all of these questions lies in their marketing strategy. Let’s break down the brilliant marketing strategy of Byju’s in great detail.

Target Audience of Byju’s
Byju’s Marketing Strategy During COVID-19 Pandemic
Roped in One of the Biggest Bollywood Superstar
Busted Biggest Myth about Technology
Sponsored Indian Cricket Jersey
Launched Regional Campaigns
Partnered with ICC to Become its Global Partner
Byju’s Became the First Indian Edtech To Sponsor FIFA World Cup

Target Audience of Byju’s

Before we dive deep into Byju’s marketing strategy let’s first understand who exactly is their target audience.

The target audience of this growing edtech company is millennials and gen z from grade 1 to the ones who are studying for competitive exams like CAT, IAS, JEE, NEET, GMAT, UPSC and banking exams.

But, apart from the students, the parents are also the target audience of the company since they are the decision-makers and the ones who pay money for the classes. With that understood, let’s analyse our marketing strategy of Byju’s.

Byju’s Marketing Strategy During COVID-19 Pandemic

During the COVID-19 outbreak, while many of the brands were facing losses, Byju’s on the other hand substantially increased its user base and revenue.

The Indian edtech company became a decacorn and crossed a $10.5 billion valuation during the pandemic after getting funding of $100 million from Silicon Valley investor and analyst Mary Meeker’s Bond Capital.

But, how did the company become so successful during the outbreak? To find an answer to this question let’s see the marketing strategy of Byju’s from the start of the pandemic.

In March 2020, when all the schools and colleges were shut the company provided free access to its complete app till the end of March.

So, for 2 months students could attend live classes and watch interactive videos without spending any money. Students who were studying in classes 1-3 could learn Maths and English concepts and students in classes 4-12 could study Maths and Science concepts.

Now, why did they give free access to the classes?

See, people love free things. When we hear this four-letter word our behavioural pattern changes and the entry barrier is eliminated.

The principle of reciprocity is also associated with this strategy. According to this principle, when someone helps us we get obligated to return the favour. So, if students use the app for 2 months and enjoy the learning process the chances of those students returning back and buying the subscription are much higher.

This strategy was very successful and the company registered 6 million new students in the month of March and 7.5 million users in April.

The edtech company said that they witnessed a 150 per cent increase in student enrollment due to this free strategy.

In August 2020, the company acquired WhiteHat Jr, an online coding school for $300 million.

Later, in April 2021, Byju’s acquired Aakash Educational Services Ltd (AESL) for USD 1 billion which is the biggest acquisition of Byju’s to date. This partnership will help the company grow its presence in the test preparation segment.

The company didn’t stop here, in July 2021, the company acquired Toppr, an online learning app for $150 million.

Byju’s wants to create its own ecosystem and that’s why it is continuously acquiring a lot of companies. The edtech giant knows that if they want to stay in the market for a long time they need to either defeat their competitors or destroy the competition by acquiring them.

Let’s see what marketing strategies Byju’s used before the pandemic.

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Roped in One of the Biggest Bollywood Superstar

Brand ambassadors are very important for any company since they give a more human touch to the brand and build authority and trust with the people.

In 2017, Byju’s made a television advertisement with Shahrukh Khan to launch their official app. This advertisement was telecasted during the India-Pakistan cricket match. This is such an amazing marketing strategy, right? We all know that the India V/S Pakistan cricket match attracts maximum eyeballs.

So, when lakhs of people were watching the match they see the King of Bollywood say ‘let your children fall in love with learning’. Due to the massive fanbase of Shahrukh Khan, a lot of students and parents started gaining interest in Byju’s app. The interesting thing about this advertisement was that it targeted both the children and parents. This campaign was very successful.

To make better relationships with Gen-Z Byju’s also tied up with Disney. Since the popularity of Disney among kids is humongous it gave the brand an added boost.

Educational games, digital worksheets and the trademark Disney stories made parents understand that their children can learn using fun activities and stories. This partnership helped in strengthening Byju’s K-12 (kindergarten to Class XII) space.

Busted Biggest Myth about Technology

Now, due to the pandemic, both parents and students have understood the importance of e-learning. But, in the past, many parents felt that mobile phones were the biggest problem in the lives of their children. Parents felt their children only use mobile phones and the internet to play games, chat with their friends and watch useless videos.

They didn’t understand that technology can help their children in studying as well. To break this myth of parents Byju’s launched a video campaign ‘Come Fall in Love With Learning’. This campaign helped parents understand that there is nothing wrong with studying using mobile phones.

Sponsored Indian Cricket Jersey

In 2019, Byju’s sponsored the Indian cricket Jersey. The logo of Byju’s on the cricket jersey was unveiled in a video campaign named ‘Keep Learning’. In this TV commercial, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant walked onto the pitch wearing the cricket jersey with Byju’s logo on it.

This shows that Byju’s has clearly understood how much Indians love cricket and are using this opportunity to grow this business. Imagine how much of a positive impact it would have created both on students and parents when they see their idols explaining the importance of learning while wearing the jersey with Byju’s logo on it.

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Launched Regional Campaigns

India is a nation of different cultures and languages. So, when any company is making its marketing strategy it is very important to target people using the language that they speak.

In the early stage, Byju’s usually launched campaigns in Hindi. Although afterwards Byju’s realised that to connect with the people living in different parts of India they need to launch regional campaigns.

In May 2019 the company roped in Mahesh Babu for a video campaign targeting Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The new campaign highlighted the evolving learning habits of children and how Byju’s app makes learning fun for them. It also explained that technology can be a friend to students and can help them study more effectively.

Later, in July 2020 the company partnered with Sudeep Sanjeev and launched two television ad-campaign in Kannada. They also launched two new television advertisements with their existing brand ambassador Mahesh Babu in Telugu.

All the four ad films were of 50 seconds each. The advertisements highlighted how students are enjoying online learning and encourages parents to accept the new method of learning.

Partnered with ICC to Become its Global Partner

Byju’s sponsoring ICC

Byju’s wasn’t just satisfied with sponsoring the Indian cricket Jersey. In February 2021, International Cricket Council (ICC) announced Byju’s as its global partner from 2021 to 2023. The three-year contract allows Byju’s to partner with all ICC events including the upcoming T20 World Cup in India and the women’s World Cup in New Zealand.

Byju’s will get extensive in-venue, broadcast, and digital rights across all ICC events. Since the ‘Keep Learning’ campaign was very successful it made sense for the company to invest more money in cricket.

Byju’s Became the First Indian Edtech To Sponsor FIFA World Cup

Byjus Sponsoring FIFA

After integrating cricket into its marketing strategy Byju’s is now leveraging the most famous sport in the world, football. On March 24, 2022, the company announced that it is sponsoring the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 which will take place from November 21 to December 18, 2022.

Through this sponsorship, Byju’s will get the rights to the 2022 FIFA World Cup marks, emblem and assets and the ability to run promotions.

Conclusion

The major takeaway from Byju’s marketing strategy is that you should focus on your target audience and brand presence.

If you see their marketing strategy from the beginning you will notice that they were directly speaking to students and parents. They made students understand that they can turn their boring studying patterns into exciting ones.

The company also understood that even though students are their end consumers, parents are the ones who will spend money on their packages.

Most parents feel that their children shouldn’t use mobile phones and the internet for studying. The company knew that if they didn’t break this myth they would never succeed. That is why they launched the ‘Keep Learning’ campaign where they explained the benefits of studying online.

In India, people are in love with cricket and acting. That is why they made Shahrukh Khan their brand ambassador and sponsored Indian cricket Jersey and became ICC’S Global Partner. This made Byju’s a household name and people started trusting the brand.

All these things show that they had studied the Indian market and the psychology of people carefully. So, next time when you are making a marketing strategy for your business first understand your target audience’s needs and behaviour patterns.

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FAQs

How much does Byju’s spend on advertising?

Byju’s spent approximately 800 crores rupees on advertising in 2020.

What are the strategies employed by Byju’s?

Byju’s roped in Sharukh Khan as its brand ambassador, partnered with ICC, the Indian cricket team and sponsored Fifa.

Why is Byju’s so successful?

Byju’s provides a personalized learning experience that is different from any other edtech startup.

July 8, 2022
The Future of Ed Tech Startups In The Wake of The New Offline Normal

The ed startups in India saw an unprecedented rise in their demand and popularity as the country went on a nationwide lockdown on March 25, 2020. When the pandemic was supposed to be a tough year for all the entrepreneurs out there, the edtech industry in India alone raised a whopping $2.2 billion with Byjus singlehandedly raising over $1 million out of it.

2020 for that matter can be considered the year of ed-tech in India with a plethora of startups mushrooming in the market. However, two years after the pandemic, things have started to get back to the new normal where students and aspirants of the various competitive exams have been embracing the offline journey.

It is time for the ed-tech startups to come a full circle by tapping into the offline market which a lot of them have left unattended within the comfort of online classes and management.

The startups in the education technology field that reeked $11.7 billion in the first quarter of 2022 in funding only saw $3.4 billion flowing in the month of April without any Unicorns being produced. While in May, although the country saw the entry of its 100th unicorn, the ed-tech industry only saw $1.6 billion coming in with a drop of 53% on a monthly basis.

Venture Capital firms including Sequoia and Y Combinator have already announced alarm bells warning startups to cut costs and increase runaways. The market situation is pushing these startups to go hybrid now more than ever before.

This article will look at some of the ed-tech startups and their plans to soft-land into offline classes again while making sense of the current market scenario of the industry.

List of Edtech Startups Planning to Enter the Offline Market
The Other Side of the Emerging Market Situation

List of Edtech Startups Planning to Enter the Offline Market

Byjus

The growth of Byjus over the years in general and during the pandemic, in particular, have been phenomenal. In 2020, it became the highest valued startup in India at over $22 billion.

Byjus has relaunched its offline classes in and around the capital already. With the offline classes and the pre-recorded online tablet classes costing the same, the startup looks forward to establishing more and more offline classes in the country.

Himanshu Bajaj, Head of BYJU’S Tuition Centre has made it clear that the firm is planning to launch 500 more tuition centres in over 200 cities across the country.

Unacademy

From beginning as a humble Youtube channel to revolutionising the very idea of online education, Unacademy has been a significant part of online pedagogy during the pandemic.

Within a span of two months, the startup grew from being valued at $2 billion in November 2020 to reaching $3.4 billion in August 2021. Unacademy has also made announcements of the launch of its various offline classes across the country.

On 8th June 2022, they launched their offline classes for NEET, IIT – JEE and other foundation courses for students from classes 9-12 at their Unacademy centre in Delhi.

During its launch, Co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal said, “We are confident our foray into physical learning centres with the best curriculum at a competitive pricing will help learners in cracking their goals and look forward to scaling them up across India”. The startup aims to enrol 15000 learners across its various centres in Kota, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Delhi and Patna

Physics Wallah

It is the latest entrant into the unicorn club by receiving $100 million in its maiden funding led by WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures in May 2022. This ed-tech platform that helps students prepare for various competitive exams was founded by Pandey and Prateek Maheswari in 2016.

Currently, they employ 1900 people including 500 teachers and 100 tech experts. This is apart from a versatile group of associate professors who would be answering the queries of the students online.

Physics Wallah plans to open 20 offline centres in 18 cities. They plan to enrol at least 10,000 students for the 2022-23 academic year.

Imarticus Learning

Imarticus Learning was launched in 2012 with the goal of training individuals to transfer careers in the fields of financial services, analytics and AI, business analysis and core technology.

By closely working with the demands of the industry, this ed-tech startup has been able to attract a lot of students as they collaborate well with relevant players in the market like IBM, KPMG, Genpact, Rise Mumbai by Barclays, Moody’s Analytics, Motilal Oswal etc.

They use dynamic technologies and learning methods to train their students. However, the post-pandemic wind has laid this startup a little low as well. So as to maintain its hold even in the offline educational situation, the firm is planning to launch more offline centres in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.

The CEO Barshikar opinionated that “There are numerous advantages of the hybrid model. You can cater to a larger audience and often give learners an option to pick what suits them best”.

The Other Side of the Emerging Market Situation

The market scenario does not look great for ed-tech startups as classes worldwide are retreating back to complete offline classes. Switching to offline mode also means that the capital and competition involved are going to skyrocket.

Investors have started to demand proof of profitability over revenue generation possibilities. At a time when investments from VCs and other investors are crunching, the demands of the situation will only make things difficult for the ed-tech industry.

The anxiety inherent in the situation is seen clearly with the rampant layoffs that these startups have embarked on. Indian ed-tech startups have already laid off 6000 employees.

It is expected that the industry might see another 60,000 layoffs this year. Vedantu alone has laid off 1200 employees already. Unacademy had announced that they laid off 600 employees in April as a part of their cost-cutting initiatives.

This is apart from the 325 part-time workers that they had laid off earlier. Another leading ed-tech startup named Lido Learning laid off more than 150 employees in February 2022 as the financial crunch was too much.

Many startups are on the verge of closing down despite funding as their venture in itself loses its meaning in the offline world.

How Can Edtech Startups Generate Leads?

Every visit to edtech website has the potential to generate leads. Here are the best lead generation strategies that work for edtech startups.

StartupTalkyRevathy Nair

Conclusion

There is no doubt in the fact that ed-tech startups have made a difference in the learning process that Indians were used to. They have played a significant role in reducing the digital divide during the pandemic. As schools and colleges are rolling out their offline classes, it is time for the hitherto online platforms to embark on the hybrid modes of classes. As investments dry up and offline classes reign, the future looks grim for ed-tech startups.

FAQs

Why do ed-tech startups fail

Many ed-tech startups fail to figure out the right business and revenue model which is one of the reasons that most edtech startups fail in India.

Why is the ed-tech industry booing

As all the schools were closed many edtech startups started providing quality education online which was the reason edtech startups started booming in India.

Is ed-tech profitable?

Yes, ed-tech is one of the most lucrative and profitable industries in India.

June 15, 2022

Zomato Recent Layoffs
November 2022	100-150 (3% of the Workforce)
May 2020	520

Twitter Recent Layoffs
November 2022	3,700 employees
July 2022	100 employees

Coinbase Recent Layoffs
November 2022	60
June 2022	1,100

Unacademy Recent Layoffs
November 2022	350 employees
June 2022	150 employees

Microsoft Recent Layoffs
October 2022	1,000 employees
August 2022	200 employees
July 2022	1,800 employees

Noom Recent Layoffs
October 2022	500 employees
April 2022	500 employees

Rupeek Recent Layoffs
September 2022	50
June 2022	180-200

Meesho Recent Layoffs
August 2022	300 employees
April 2022	150 employees

Better.com Recent Layoffs
August 2022	250 employees
April 2022	1,000 employees
March 2022	2,000 employees
December 2021	900 employees

Ford Recent Layoffs
August 2022	3,000 employees
April 2022	580 employees

Robinhood Recent Layoffs
August 2022	700+
April 2022	300+

Vedantu Recent Layoffs
July 2022	100 employees
May 2022	624 employees

Netflix Recent Layoffs
June 2022	300 employees
May 2022	150 employees

Startup Name	Notebook
Headquarters	Kolkata
Founders	Achin Bhattacharya, Subhayu Roy, and Abhishek Dutta
Industry	EdTech
Founded	2018
Website	notebook.school

Lido Learning – Democratizing Education For Children, Or Not?

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Lido Learning.

These days conventional on-campus, in-person education is being replaced by online education. According to some research done in 2019, it was shown that the online education industry will surpass $230 billion by 2025, and considering the significant influence of the COVID-19 outbreak, online programmes are expected to experience much more growth by 2025.

In reality, the pandemic has proved how effective and long-lasting e-learning can be. It ensures that education is available in the event of a public health emergency, natural calamity, or another event that prevents students and instructors from travelling. It may serve students from all around one country and beyond, bringing in perspectives from all over the world. In addition, it has also been observed that the e-learning atmosphere promotes a better work-life balance.

Lido Learning is an ed-tech business that uses an engaging online platform to transform education for every kid in India. So, there are several other online platforms for Indian students to engage with. What is Lido Learning doing differently?

In Lido Learning’s online platform, students benefit from cutting-edge content such as interactive games and animated videos as well as a personalised platform for homework, quizzes, tasks, and motivating professors, thanks to their fascinating and enjoyable live online lessons. Despite all such perks, Lido Learning surprisingly shut down its operations in February 2022.

Read this article further to know more about Lido Learning’s founder, business model, revenue model, funding, downfall, and more.

Lido Learning – Company Highlights

Startup Name	Lido Learning
Also Known As	Lido
Legal Name	Quality Tutorials Pvt Ltd.
Industry	Ed-tech
Headquarter	Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Founders	Sahil Sheth
Founded	2019
Areas Served	India
Website	www.lidolearning.com

About Lido Learning and How it Works?
Lido Learning – Industry
Lido Learning – Name, Logo and Tagline
Lido Learning – Founders
Lido Learning – Startup Story
Lido Learning – Vision and Mission
Lido Learning – Business Model
Lido Learning – Funding and Investors
Lido Learning – Competitors
Lido Learning – Downfall

About Lido Learning and How it Works?

Lido is India’s top Small Group Tuitions platform, offering sessions in Math, Science, English, and Coding to children from Kindergarten to children in 10th standard. Cutting-edge interactive animated video material and gamified learning taught by India’s top 5% of teachers are part of the Lido experience. Each class has a maximum teacher-to-student ratio of 1:6 to ensure that the students get ample mentoring, feedback, and clarification.

A student requires a face-to-face connection in a group of no more than 6 students with an instructor to educate them, interactive content to keep them interested, and tailored technology to boost results for optimal student learning. These three elements have been integrated at Lido to create a 21st-century classroom that is entertaining for children, trustworthy for parents, and empowering for its instructors.

Lido Learning’s exclusive Roblox game development platform is for kids to take their first leap in a game development environment.

Roblox teaches youngsters how to:

Basic understanding of the Lua code language for Roblox studio scripting.
Roblox game development fundamentals such as model creation, terrain editing, cutting through portions, and adjusting game lighting.
How to use Roblox to publish and share functional games so that others could benefit from their new game production abilities.

Lido is the finest option for kids because it outperforms all other digital learning applications and tutors.

Individual Attention: Every Lido lesson is engaging and interactive with just 6 students, ensuring that each child receives personal attention, continuous feedback, and the chance to clear up any doubts right away.
Interesting Content: Each lesson includes interactive games, HD animated films, and live quiz contests in class, all designed by Stanford, Harvard, and IIT alumni to ensure that the kids learn ideas and enjoy learning.
Real-world Qualities: Lido addresses both school and non-school abilities such as teamwork, leadership, and imagination, preparing children to be job creators rather than job seekers.

Lido Learning – Industry

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the education sector in India has been the most impacted. Today’s learning is no longer restricted to specific conventional classrooms. The government’s limits and tight safety measures have prepared the way for the new approaches.

The government, public and private schools, coaches, coaching institutions, students, and instructors have all been inclined towards embracing the digital style of the learning experience, which is a result of COVID disruptions, resulting in the EdTech revolution we are experiencing today.

The Indian EdTech business is reported to have garnered $16.1 billion in venture capital financing, up from $500 million in 2010. The K-12 segment, higher education, and upskilling sectors are driving this industry’s expansion.

India’s EdTech business is expected to reach $30 billion in the next ten years, thanks to the increasing popularity of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and distance education.

The widespread usage of mobile phones, on the other hand, is thought to improve students’ connectivity and learning capacities. Nevertheless, even as accessibility improves, pricing remains an issue for specialised EdTech devices, particularly for lower and lower-middle-income families, restricting their reach.

EdTech startups in India are looking forward to focusing on improving educational objectives, results, and student engagement through improved technical and innovative solutions.

Lido Learning – Name, Logo and Tagline

Lido Logo

The tagline of Lido Learning says, “#MakeSuccessAHabit”

Lido Learning – Founders

Lido Learning was founded by Sahil Sheth in 2019.

Sahil Sheth

Lido’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer is Sahil Sheth’s purpose is to use technology to aid students to realise their maximum potential by making learning engaging and exciting. Sahil has been involved in India’s EdTech movement since its inception, about a decade ago. He sold his first firm, Infinite Student, to Byjus and served as the business’s vice president until 2018.

During his time at Byjus, Sahil discovered that, while children enjoyed viewing self-paced videos, they favoured the real-time engagement and flow of opinions with friends and peers which can only be achieved during face-to-face, small group, live tuition lessons. Sahil completed his bachelor’s in science, mathematics, and economics from Duke University, America.

Lido Learning – Startup Story

Sahil has been involved in India’s EdTech movement since its inception, about a decade ago. He sold his first firm, Infinite Student, to Byjus and served as the business’s vice president until 2018. During his time at Byjus, Sahil discovered that, while children enjoyed viewing self-paced videos, they favoured the real-time engagement and flow of opinions with friends and peers which can only be achieved during face-to-face, small group, live tuition lessons.

After figuring out all the prevailing shortcomings of conventional tuition classes, Sahil created Lido learning to compensate for the same. Lido Learning was founded with one clear aim, which is, to revolutionize the conventional local group tuition class sector by providing tech-enabled learning tools to tutors and world-class learning to all children, allowing them to achieve their maximum capabilities in the classroom and even beyond.

In 73 days, Sahil Sheth and his team built the platform. The platform’s testing began with kids in Delhi and Mumbai, followed by Chandigarh and Lucknow.
Moreover, the creators discovered that their concept was more interesting and engaging than traditional tuitions throughout the testing.

During the trials, they discovered that parents in smaller cities were delighted that their children were receiving the same high-quality education as children in larger cities.

Sahil Sheth commented on this, saying, “Students in smaller towns were thrilled to be getting the same product and the same quality of teachers that students in the bigger cities were getting. That is when Lido’s vision changed. It was not just about making tuition classes convenient anymore, it was about democratizing education for all.”

The student-to-teacher ratio at LIDO is 1:6. LIDO is also giving their kids a “Rockstar teacher” who will educate them with “interactive content” to keep them engaged. They also have a customised platform to help them enhance their outcomes.

Lido Learning – Vision and Mission

Lido’s mission is to inspire and empower every child for the future.

Lido Learning – Business Model

Lido’s business model is B2C Education Solutions – companies that provide online courses, tutoring, educational materials, interactive toys, learning games, and so on.

Lido is a platform enabling students to take live online lessons. Math, English, and science are among the disciplines taught online. It offers self-paced lessons, discussion-based lectures, individualised practice, performance monitoring, and other features for smaller groups of students.

Its income strategy is subscription-based. Lido Learning now offers materials and tutorials for classes V through X, however, for the firm to stay afloat, customers must pay a price to have yearly access to the tutoring.

Lido Learning – Funding, and Investors

Some of the most well-known angel investors sponsored the EdTech firm, Lido Learning. Mukesh Bansal, founder of Myntra, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Paytm, Anupam Mittal, founder of Shaadi.com and a Shark Tank India judge, Ronnie Screwvala, founder of UpGrad, and Ananth Narayanan, founder of MedLife.

Date	Round	Amount	Lead Investors
Sep 10, 2021	Series C	$10M	Unilazer Ventures
Nov 25, 2020	Seed Round	–	–
Mar 29, 2020	Series B	$7.5M	BAce Capital
Nov 11, 2019	Series A	$3M	Ronnie Screwvala

Lido Learning – Competitors

Lido Learning’s top competitors include Vretta, Cuemath, WhiteHat Jr., Vedantu, BYJU’s, ENpower, Lawpilots and Uvaro.

Lido Learning – Downfall

Lido Learning is an EdTech firm, based in India, whose demise came as a huge surprise to the market. Lido Learning abruptly pulled the plug on February 4, 2022, leaving 150 employees with serious doubts about the future of the company.

Inability to Pay the Workforce Their Salaries

Employees are a firm’s foundation; without them, the firm would not be able to run properly. Now, a corporation must adequately care for its employees to achieve this. When the teachers and personnel of Lido Learning were not paid, a red flag was raised. Teachers and employees resorted to social media to express their dissatisfaction with the firm when their salaries were not paid. They still haven’t paid pending salaries for the people they fired back in January 2022.

Inability for Collecting Funding

Even though Lido Learning has raised $24 million in funding to date from well-known investors such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Anupam Mittal, several organisations who intended to participate in the startup backed out at the last minute owing to the epidemic. Several investment arrangements with firms like CureFit and ByteDance were cancelled. As a result, the company’s reserves were depleted, causing financial troubles.

No Refunds for Customers

Another major cause for this EdTech’s collapse is that the company’s consumers were not effectively treated, their needs were not satisfied, and the service was poor. Some expectations were not met when clients requested to end the trial period, and refunds were not issued. The termination of their memberships resulted in poor word of mouth and negative comments from consumers, and the company’s image suffered as a result.

Lido Learning – FAQs

What does Lido Learning do?

Lido Learning is an ed-tech business that uses an engaging online platform to transform education for every kid in India.

When was Lido Learning founded?

Lido Learning was founded by Sahil Sheth in 2019.

Who founded Lido Learning?

Sahil Sheth founded Lido Learning in 2019.

Has Lido Learning shut its operations?

Yes, Lido Learning abruptly pulled the plug on February 4, 2022.

May 28, 2022

How to Start an EdTech Company in 2022? (Step by Step Guide)
Markus Aurelius said that the first step of understanding anything is simplicity; he proposed that one should understand the nature of something before dwelling on it. So going by the words of one of the most renowned philosophers in the world, let us understand what is ed-tech or educational technology.

Breaking it down to its simplest form educational technology usually involves the use of computer software and hardware along with teaching pedagogies to facilitate and enhance the learning experience. The ed-tech industry is quite a niche market and its demand has been rising in recent years. so if you are someone who wants to build your own edtech company here’s how you can get started.

Research the Market
Narrow Down and Validate Your Idea
Define Your UVP and Choose the Right Business Model
Build the Perfect Team
Have a Proof of Concept/MVP

Research the Market

Research about EdTech Industry

While I was researching this topic, I understood that many renowned personalities in this field have suggested first understanding the ed-tech market. For example, before the pandemic started, the US ed-tech sector received 1.66 billion in investments, which is the highest in 5 years.

While many industries were at a disadvantage due to the pandemic, ed-tech companies raised an astonishing 16.1 billion USD. Knowing the market, its demands, and other things like that would ensure any suitor in this sector scale the evidence and weigh the facts.

Narrow Down and Validate Your Idea

You need to understand the concept of divide and conquer when it comes to ed-tech. The ed-tech market is too vast and ever-changing for a single entity to rule over.

The first step is to critically and objectively view your own idea. Find out whether your idea serves the customer’s needs and itself is unique. This will also go on to indirectly help you predict the market, discover the trend of your niche, and identify your competitive advantages.

It may look tempting to start your own ed-tech company when I put it across in such simple terms but we need to understand the problem of validity because before you propose any idea you have to ask yourself these 3 questions,
- Does your idea solve a problem that is troubling a lot of people or improve a system that is quite essential in this specific area?
- How do you know that you are solving a problem?
- Do you have enough data and research backup to support and pitch your idea?
The development of edtech startups and interesting fund raise in India

Edtech startups have made it easier to learn on online and make it an effective alternative to offline learning. The fundings in Edtech startups have skyrocketed

StartupTalkyVibhavari Madki

Define Your UVP and Choose the Right Business Model

Any business requires a UVP or a unique value proposition. What can you offer that other companies can’t? Your unique value proposition can be constructed by 3 crucial things,
- The value that is delivered by your product.
- The customer base that you would like to target.
- What is the approach you are adopting to sell your product in this highly competitive market?
The right business model must follow your UVP. A business model usually entails how your ed-tech startup will achieve its goals and earn its revenue. It also describes the main highlights of your product and how it is going to create value for your customers.

You can experiment with a number of business models. Certain business models usually are taken up with the intention of rapid growth and the capture of large market shares, whereas certain others would usually involve selling products to institutions and monetizing your customer base from the beginning.

My advice to anyone who is interested in this area would be to choose a business model that helps you build a sustainable and independent business around a challenge or problem that you are trying to solve.

Build the Perfect Team

Building the Right Team

The right team is necessary for any business to succeed. In the highly competitive ed-tech industry, one needs to have the right team for even his/her idea to even come into consideration in front of investors. The best way to address this problem is to hire a group of professionals who are passionate and have an experienced background in education, which acts as their primary motive and the monetary benefits as their second priority.

Try to build a team that can help you create a scalable monetization model and a go-to-market strategy for your product. Being an ed-tech company’s CEO is definitely a different experience. You should start engaging in educational conventions, start visiting your local schools and understanding their learning demands and start talking to other individuals who are involved in the same business.

Being a startup in the initial stages would usually mean that you would have to work with minimum revenue. It is always better to work with an outsourcing company than pay an in-house team of engineers.

The need to have a skilled CTO – an individual who has the experience and expertise to work on the design of your product and oversee your development team is key to progress.

Have a Proof of Concept/MVP

Theoretically, it is easy to pitch any business idea. Practically every aspect of the product will find it difficult to serve and deliver to different demands of the real world. The best way to resolve this issue would be to build a proof of concept.

By building a proof of concept, you would have a strong base to validate your idea on a minimal budget. This application would usually involve the most important functionality or risky features of your product. Fancy design should not be used here to dazzle users.

Minimum viable product (MVP) works on similar lines with proof of concept. Proof of concept usually involves proving that your product will work in real life but whereas an MVP ensures that your customers are satisfied and pleased with your product.

Top 17 Emerging Edtech Startups in India 2022

The edtech industry in India is one of the most profitable and successful industries. Take a look at emerging edtech startups in the industry.

StartupTalkyAshwini

Conclusion

Finally, in conclusion, we can say that by following these steps, you may have the perfect start for your company, but we should all remember consistency is key for any business to become better. With thorough research and strategy, any business can become successful and so is the case with ed-tech.

FAQs

How does EdTech make money?

Usually, edtech companies make money by selling their courses to students or schools. There are also companies that provide their courses for free but charge a small fee for the certificate.

How do you get funding for EdTech startups?

First, you need to prepare a solid business plan and then you can approach angel investors or VCs to pitch your idea and receive funding.

What is the future of EdTech in India?

India’s EdTech industry is growing at a really fast pace and is expected to reach $30 billion in the next 10 years.
April 7, 2022
How Entrepreneurs turned Impossible Goals into a Possibility in 2021?
This article is contributed by the multiple entrepreneurs from different fields.

The year 2021 has been one of the most memorable as well as the toughest year for the business industry. No matter which sector, every one of them faced some challenges and somehow they are also able to overcome them. With the pandemic creating havoc with the third wave once again. this year also seems like going to be a challenging one. Then again, when there is a will, there is always a way. Entrepreneurs, with their patience and perseverance, are able to achieve, what they thought was impossible.

StartupTalky took the initiative and asks some of the entrepreneurs, how they fulfilled their goals that seemed impossible to achieve in the year 2021. Let’s take a look.

Rohit Sahni | CEO & Founder, WK Life

Rohit Sahni | CEO & Founder, WK Life

Recovering and surviving the slowdown of the market during the second wave of Covid as it affected the market and sales hugely, was the toughest thing in the year 2021. Still, we managed to recover our sales pretty well, we even witnessed an increase in 25% festive sales as compared to the pre-covid era. We achieved it by our strategic planning and expanding our product line. We added a lot of new categories this year such as personal care products, handbags for women, homecare, and other things. We also went digital for the online sales this year that added to our revenue and helped us reach new regions and customers.

Shyatto Raha | CEO & Founder, MyHealthcare

Shyatto Raha | CEO & Founder, MyHealthcare

The first wave of Covid-19 in early 2020 had challenged our existing healthcare delivery channels in more ways than one and forced us to evolve and acknowledge the gaps that exist. The second wave only worsened it further. The integrated MyHealthcare Ecosystem was able to manage the complete patient care needs from diagnosis to delivery. The MyHealthcare platform is integrated across 80 leading hospitals, 65 specialty clinics, leading diagnostics providers such as Healthians, Lal Path Labs, Metropolis; leading home care providers HCAH and Antara; pharmacy providers Tata 1MG & PharmEasy; clinical devices from Omron, Roche Diabetes, AliveCor, and Abbott. With MyHealthcare’s EMR integrated across the care ecosystem, doctors were able to view a complete patient longitudinal history and deliver effective care to their patients.

Abhinav Mittal | Founder, The WorldGrad

Abhinav Mittal | Founder, The WorldGrad

I (Abhinav Mital) and my team at The WorldGrad were aspiring to create a new breed of programs that allow students to complete a part of their overseas degree online and then progress on-campus for the rest. This was supposed to become the ultimate platform in hybrid learning where students get an equivalent experience while learning online, similar to real-time classes. The advantage for students is that it helps them save up to INR 30-40Lakh in their total overseas education costs. And pick up valuable academic skills while still in-country.

Through these programs, students also demonstrate the authenticity of their intent from a visa/immigration standpoint. Which is often a high barrier to cross for any prospective student. Needless to say, it requires the buy-in and recognition from overseas universities, especially those in the top 2% in the world. Developing an online program and being able to deliver it as per equivalent standards that can be accepted across multiple countries and institutions was a daunting task that many thought would be impossible.

Today 20 universities and colleges (500+ qualifications) across Australia, the UK, UAE, and the USA are partnered with The WorldGrad. This makes us the largest provider of hybrid programs in the world. More importantly, The WorldGrad has successfully enrolled and graduated several students over the past year. Who are now on their way to their destination of choice in 2022 – which would be a long and successful educational and professional journey!

I would say we achieved this through our dedicated approach towards getting the right leadership team on board. The team stuck with a tangible goal in mind and outcomes were mapped with the right effort.

Ankur Singh | CEO & Founder, Witzeal Technologies Pvt. Ltd

Ankur Singh | CEO & Founder, Witzeal Technologies Pvt. Ltd

I am happy to see Witzeal today creating milestone innovations in the ever-growing Indian gaming industry. The primary focus of Witzeal is Innovations at our multi-gaming platform for providing a unique gaming experience to our players.

Apu Pavithran | CEO & Founder, Mitsogo

Apu Pavithran | CEO & Founder, Mitsogo

Mitsogo hosted its annual user conference, HexCon21, from September 21-23rd for its flagship product, Hexnode. The event was a tremendous success – we managed to pull off a 100-speaker event virtually, and we saw a total of around 3000+ attendees over the three days. HexCon being only a year old, this was a massive achievement for us. The event hosted many prestigious speakers from reputed organizations like Microsoft, Kaspersky, AWS, and HP. The speakers covered diverse topics, which were relevant to cybersecurity, UEM, and data security. The event proved to be a great platform to network with some of the most reputed cybersecurity speakers. The most important achievement is that despite being a virtual event, it was a huge success, and that’s an impressive feat for us.

Himanshu Arya | CEO & Founder, Grapes

Himanshu Arya | CEO & Founder, Grapes

Though there is nothing that an Entrepreneur thinks is impossible, it is what one can think of and work towards achieving that it can be made possible. Last year, we decided to revamp Grapes Digital to Grapes, which means transforming the company from a digital marketing agency to an integrated one. The decision was taken after analysing the market sentiments, the client’s needs, and the prospect it holds in the future.

Transitioning Grapes from just digital to an integrated agency was a big leap for all of us and it was made possible by taking the right steps at the right moment. Strengthening our vulnerabilities and slowly achieving the path to perfection is what I believe in. Success comes only through continuous effort and struggle. In any business, the impossible thing can be done smoothly if the organization works together in pursuit of a common goal. With the help of dedicated colleagues and team members, we always develop a set of core values strategically as a framework for how we can achieve it.

Nishant Behl | CEO & Founder, Expand My Business

Nishant Behl | CEO & Founder, Expand My Business

At Expand My Business, we believe that nothing is essentially impossible. Things may be hard to achieve for once but the team’s focus and determination have helped us become the largest marketplace for digital services in record time. Expand My Business very recently reached the milestone of 1000+ successful clients since our foundation in 2018. We have now established our presence across six continents of the world, by providing quality digital services in over 23 countries. While this seemed to be an impossible task to achieve given the severe impact the Covid-19 pandemic had all across the globe, it feels surreal to have achieved it.

Furthermore, our growth from 2020 to 2021 has been notable with our GMV increasing by 3025% and the revenue going up by 4900%. With over 1000 clients, our buyer base has gone up by 1122% along with our team size increasing from just 5 to 70 members! The exponential growth is owing to the consistency and persistent efforts of the team members across all domains and departments of the company. The company has hired some of the best talents with cross-industry experience in all departments which has helped us cater to a larger audience base, both online and offline, and also increase our customers and thus, sales.

Vatsal Agarwal | Founder, The Baklava Box

Vatsal Agarwal – Founder, The Baklava-Box

I (Vatsal) was sure that people who have already tasted Baklavas would shop from us but we realized that we needed a bigger audience. We tried to influence more people to try Baklavas. We never thought that educating customers who didn’t know what Baklavas is was going to be difficult. We have been trying to expand our customers’ by sampling our products and educational marketing campaigns. Now, a large portion of our customers includes those trying Turkish sweets for the first time. Getting people to look beyond traditional Indian sweets for holidays and getting them to open up to fusion or gourmet desserts has also been a challenge. Right now, we are the biggest sellers of premium baklava in India.

Varun Vashisthaa | Founder, HairVeda

Varun Vashistha | Founder, HairVeda

I never thought that HairVeda can go global within a year of its inception in India. With consistent work and company vision our brand got registered at Amazon.com and our products are available in countries such as the US, Canada, Mexico, and many more. The quality of our product is one of the main reasons behind the popularity of our brand.

Shriyans Bhandari | CEO & Co-Founder, Greensole

Shriyans Bhandari | CEO & Co-Founder, Greensole

We thought it would be very difficult to receive foreign funding and donation but ultimately, we were able to get the FCRA certificate after having a team behind it for 2 to 3 years. I think putting in effort and being persistent does pay off and that’s what we have been doing. We received our first donation of payment for our organization for doing good social work.

Kunal Patil | CEO & Co-Founder, WorkIndia

Kunal Patil | CEO & Co-Founder, WorkIndia

In order to provide employment to the blue-collar workforce and bridge the gap between the employee and the employer, WorkIndia decided to launch the Direct Calling Model. This model is aimed at helping jobseekers in contacting the employer or HR directly. This helps address the urgent need of finding a job by a blue-collar worker and also helps them avoid middlemen.

Initially, we were not sure if the change brought about by the launch of this model would be welcomed by employers and the recruitment industry, since they are accustomed to working in a traditional way. But being a pure tech company, we at WorkIndia were able to use technology and with the right product innovation, we’re able to prove the benefits and effectiveness of this model in the industry. Our efforts were rewarded since the Direct Calling Model was subsequently accepted by employers across the board and now this is an industry practice.

Akshay Puljal | CEO, Quikish

Akshay Puljal | CEO, Quikish

Our biggest challenge was standardising Indian recipes and dishes. The goal was to retain big flavoUrs and balance the taste, in a single-serve pouch and a final process that does not overwhelm our consumers. It did take a while but we got there. We really had to delve deep into how every ingredient merges with another to give unique flavours. Soil, climate, water, the mode of harvest, processing, everything plays a role in the characteristics of an ingredient. This is why we are very particular about how and from where we get our ingredients from.

Shilpa Rathi | Founder, I Am Love

We launched in June with products that were completely new for the market. Nutri-cosmetics are drinks that you drink to get rid of skin concerns like acne, pigmentation, and dark spots. It was a tough spot. We had some slow initial months. Even the people who purchased the products assumed that the product was topical. They would get weirded out when they realized that the product was meant to be consumed because they had to consider if it was healthy and natural. We had a rough start but we were consistently giving our products to people who had skin concerns and we kept posting about their progress.

We were posting before and after photographs on our social media. September is when we first boomed and our sales went higher with November being our best month. We sold out our first stock in three months from September. Within another month, we sold out of stock for acne and pigmentation products. That is something I thought was impossible. Our product requires a lot of customer education because customers don’t realize how acne is an internal problem. Tropical creams are going to help you fade out the acne that is on top but not going to stop acne from coming. So yes, it was a tough start but now we are going strong.

Farooq Adam | Co-Founder, Fynd

Farooq Adam | Co-Founder, Fynd

The lockdowns inspired by the pandemic were an obstacle for most companies out there. We were able to successfully help retail brands navigate the uncertainty and helped them grow with an adaptive omnichannel strategy. Technology is capable of solving problems so effectively that obstacles shift and give way to new methods of doing things.

Some of the things that we were able to achieve during the past year:
- Post-pandemic onboarding of brands.
- Scaling up brand sales in 2021, up to 2x for brands like Ruosh, Spykar, and others.
- Doubling the size of our company from 200 people to 400 people.
- Successfully launching our free-to-use AI-powered image editing and background removal tool, erase.bg.
Abhishek Nehru & Santosh Dabke | Co-founders, Ripplr

Abhishek Nehru & Santosh Dabke | Co-founders, Ripplr

Changing the mindset of the brands to look at a professional distribution setup was one of the key challenges since most of the brands have been working with traditional distributors for more than 2-3 decades. We achieved it by convincing the brand to start with us in a small micro-market where we outperformed all the others by a big margin. Also, the impact of covid was so lethal that the brands realised our value and started expanding with us in other geographies as well.

Rasesh Seth | Founder, Nextyn

Rasesh Seth | Founder, Nextyn

Disrupting the traditional consulting industry is something that I thought would not be impossible but would take years to do. As an entrepreneur, the word impossible doesn’t exist in our dictionary, its more about when can it be done, and how well it can be executed.

At Nextyn, we’ve built technology around providing world class expertise to clients across the world. Our platform “Expert Cloud” lets companies from across the globe get access to some of the leading global thinkers, that are shaping today’s world. Our proprietary Machine Learning algorithm matches client projects to relevant experts from over 70 geographies and 30 different industries. The platform has assisted over 100 clients from 20 geographies get access to knowledge on demand.

Conclusion

The year 2021 was definitely a memorable year for all the above entrepreneurs as they were able to achieve some of the goals for their company. The Pandemic is looming over our head and has bought a lot of uncertainty but with their hard work, the entrepreneurs were able to turn the year fruitful.
February 1, 2022

Tag: edtech india

Lead (Ex-Lead School) – Success Story of India’s No 1 School Edtech Platform!

Lead – Company Highlights

About Lead (Formerly Lead School)

Lead – Products and Services

Lead – Founders

Sumeet Mehta

Smita Deorah

Lead – Startup Story

Lead – Vision, and Mission Statement

Lead – Industry

Lead – Name and Logo

Lead – Business Model, and Revenue Model

Lead – Funding, and Investors

Lead – Growth and Revenues

Lead Revenue, Financials and More

Expenses Breakdown

Lead – Products and Features

Lead – Challenges

Lead – Campaign

Campaign to increase enrollment at inexpensive private schools

Lead – ESOPs

Lead – Acquistion

Lead Layoffs

Lead – Competitors

Lead – Future Plans

FAQs

What is Lead?

Who is the founder of Lead?

Who is the CEO of Lead School (currently Lead)?

Is Lead free?

Which companies do Lead compete with?

Innovating Career Preparation: Gaurav Goel, Co-founder and CEO, Toprankers, Discusses the Power of Digital Learning

StartupTalky: Gaurav, what does your company do? What was the motivation/vision with which you started?

StartupTalky: What is/are the USPs of your products?

StartupTalky: How has the ed-tech industry changed in recent years, and how has your company adapted to these changes?

StartupTalky: How do you stay up to date on the latest trends and developments in the ed-tech industry?

StartupTalky: What key metrics do you track to check the company’s growth and performance?

StartupTalky: What were the most significant challenges your company faced in the past year and how did you overcome them?

StartupTalky: What are the different strategies you use for marketing? Tell us about any growth hack which you pulled off.

StartupTalky: What opportunities do you see for future growth in your industry in India and the world? What kind of difference in market behavior have you seen within states in India?

StartupTalky: What lessons did your team learn in the past year and how will these inform your future plans and strategies?

StartupTalky: How do you plan to expand the Customers, product, and team base in the future?

StartupTalky: One tip that you would like to share with people reading this article who want to get into entrepreneurship.

List of Top Companies That Have Laid off Their Employees in 2022

Find your next top tech job in 1 week

HP

Founder – Bill Hewlett, David PackardFounded – 1939Laid Off – Up to 6,000 Employees (by 2025)

Zomato

Founder – Deepinder Goyal, Gaurav Gupta, Pankaj ChaddahFounded – 2008

Amazon

Founder – Jeff BezosFounded – 1994Laid Off – 10,000 Employees (November 2022)

Meta

Founder – Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew McCollum, Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo SaverinFounded – 2004Laid Off – 11,000 Employees (November 2022)

Twitter

Founder – Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Noah GlassFounded – 2006

Udaan

Founder – Amod Malviya, Vaibhav Gupta, Sujeet KumarYear – 2016Laid Off – 350 Employees (November 2022)

Coinbase

Founder – Brian Armstrong and Fred EhrsamFounded – 2012

Unacademy

Founder – Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, Roman SainiFounded – 2015

Microsoft

Founder – Bill Gates, Paul AllenFounded – 1975

BYJU’S

Founder – Byju Raveendran, Divya GokulnathFounded – 2011Laid Off – 2,500 (October 2022)

Noom

Founder – Saeju Jeong, Artem PetakovFounded – 2008

Clear

Founder – Ankit Solanki, Archit Gupta, Srivatsan ChariFounded – 2011Laid Off – 190 to 200 Employees (September 2022)

Rupeek

Founder – Sumit ManiyarFounded – 2015

Meesho

Founder – Sanjeev Barnwal, Vidit AatreyFounded – 2015

Better.Com

Founder – Eric Wilson, Erik Bernhardsson, Shawn Low, Viral Shah, Vishal GargFounded – 2016

Ford

Founder – Henry FordFounded – 1903

Walmart

Founder – Samuel Moore WaltonFounded – 1962Laid Off – 200 Employees (August 2022)

Founder – Bill Hewlett, David Packard
Founded – 1939
Laid Off – Up to 6,000 Employees (by 2025)

Founder – Deepinder Goyal, Gaurav Gupta, Pankaj Chaddah
Founded – 2008

Founder – Jeff Bezos
Founded – 1994
Laid Off – 10,000 Employees (November 2022)

Founder – Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew McCollum, Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin
Founded – 2004
Laid Off – 11,000 Employees (November 2022)

Founder – Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Noah Glass
Founded – 2006

Founder – Amod Malviya, Vaibhav Gupta, Sujeet Kumar
Year – 2016
Laid Off – 350 Employees (November 2022)

Founder – Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam
Founded – 2012

Founder – Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, Roman Saini
Founded – 2015

Founder – Bill Gates, Paul Allen
Founded – 1975

Founder – Byju Raveendran, Divya Gokulnath
Founded – 2011
Laid Off – 2,500 (October 2022)

Founder – Saeju Jeong, Artem Petakov
Founded – 2008

Founder – Ankit Solanki, Archit Gupta, Srivatsan Chari
Founded – 2011
Laid Off – 190 to 200 Employees (September 2022)

Founder – Sumit Maniyar
Founded – 2015

Founder – Sanjeev Barnwal, Vidit Aatrey
Founded – 2015

Founder – Eric Wilson, Erik Bernhardsson, Shawn Low, Viral Shah, Vishal Garg
Founded – 2016

Founder – Henry Ford
Founded – 1903

Founder – Samuel Moore Walton
Founded – 1962
Laid Off – 200 Employees (August 2022)

Founder – Vladimir Tenev, Baiju Bhatt
Founded – 2013

Founder – Anand Prakash, Pulkit Jain, Saurabh Saxena, Vamsi Krishna
Founded – 2011

Founder – Rosen Sharma, Jay Vaishnav, Suman Saraf
Founded – 2011
Laid Off – 120 to 150 Employees (July 2022)

Founder – Zhang Yiming
Founded – 2016
Laid Off – 100 Employees (July 2022)

Founder – Marc Randolph, Reed Hastings
Founded – 1997

Founder – Elon Musk, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning
Founded – 2003
Laid Off – 200 (June 2022)

Founder – Angad Kikla and Naisheel Vardhan
Founded – 2019
Laid Off – 191 (June 2022)

Founder – Gajendra Jangid, Mehul Agrawal, Ruchit Agarwal, Vikram Chopra
Founded – 2015
Laid Off – 600 Employees (May 2022)

Founder – Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth
Founded – 2005
Laid Off – 700 (May 2022)

Founder – Prasad Kompalli, Ashutosh Lawania
Founded – 2017
Laid Off – 500 (May 2022)

Founder – Albinder Dhindsa
Founded – 2013
Laid Off – 1,600 approx (March 2022)

Founder – Agrawal, Sachan, Arun Lodhi, Bimal Kartheek Rebba
Founded – 2016
Laid Off – 300 (March 2022)

Founder – Ajith Karimpana
Founded – 2012
Laid Off – 180 (March 2022)

Founder – Gaurav Kumar, Aditya Prasad, Harsh Pokharna
Founded – 2017
Laid Off – 40 (February 2022)

Founder – Sahil Sheth
Founded – 2019
Laid Off – 150+ Employees (February 2022)

Founder – Antonius Johannes Jurgens, Samuel van den Bergh, Georg Schicht
Founded – 1929
Laid Off – 1,500 Employees (January 2022)

Founder – Cheng Wei, Zhang Bo, Wu Rui
Founded – 2012
Laid Off – 3000 (February 2022)

Founder – Henry VIII
Founded – 1516
Laid Off – 700 (January 2022)

Founder – Henri Nestlé
Founded – 1866
Laid Off – 104 (March 2022)

Founder – Jack Cohen
Founded – 1919
Laid Off – 1600 (February 2022)

Founder – Ellis Jacob, Garth Drabinsky, Gerald W. Schwartz
Founded – 1999
Laid Off – 5000 (January 2022)

Founder – Arthur Ryan
Founded – 1969
Laid Off – 400 (January 2022)

Founder – Condé Nast
Founded – 1909
Laid Off – 90% of the Workforce