Frontrow which is a celebrity-led learning platform has fired 75% of its workforce due to funding winter. This came to light when a source disclosed said that 130 employees across domains such as product, sales, engineering, generalists, operations and customer support have been let go.
The founder of Frontrow Ishaan Preet Singh explained the matter and said "Roughly 125-130 employees were let go of. We have a 45-member team now and the layoffs are part of a "redo" of the organization. Our focus on non-academic skills will continue, only the approach will change. Our go-to-market strategy will change. We will be more product-led, and more organic going ahead. Unfortunately, as we realized that a sales and marketing-led approach to this market didn’t work with our current delivery model, we had to let go of a large part of our team. Over the past couple of months, it has become clear that the business fundamentals were still not working despite our best efforts."
The main reason for the layoffs is the funding drop that has become a problem with most of the Indian start-up ecosystem. Before FrontRow India’s largest ed-tech platform Byju’s said that it would probably cut 2,500 jobs in an attempt to break even by March. Several Edtech startups such as Unacademy, Byju’s, Vedantu etc are facing a major downtrend because of which they are forced to lay off their staff.
The Edtech sector became the beloved of investors during the pandemic and witnessed funding to the tune of $8.4 billion during the 2 years. It helped the sector produce 5 unicorns, but now all of these startups are currently struggling with a funding crunch. The decline in funding has become the reason for these companies to take several cost-cutting measures. Indian Edtech startups have laid off over 7,000 employees in 2022 so far - the highest compared to any other sector. Besides, startups like Lido Learning, Crejo.Fun, Udaay and SuperLearn have had to shut their operations this year.
FrontRow was founded in 2020, and this Indian startup presents itself as “a learning and community platform focused on creative arts and sports”, and it works to onboard celebrities from the field of music and comedy and launches courses based on upskilling in hobbies and non-academic skills. The company has raised about $17.2 million (Rs 130 crore) in funding to date, and the last round was in September 2021.
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