In total, there are 80 employees leaving the edtech, 40 put in their papers voluntarily, said Ashwin Damera, cofounder and CEO, Eruditus
The edtech unicorn has halved its talent acquisition team to carry forward its plans to reduce hiring to 10%
According to Inc42’s Indian Startup Layoff Tracker, eight edtech startups have laid off 3,079 employees so far in 2022, including Eruditus
Mumbai-based edtech unicorn Eruditus has joined the growing list of startups laying off employees, as it has laid off 40 employees from its workforce.
Ashwin Damera, cofounder and CEO of the edtech unicorn, told Moneycontrol that Eruditus has carried out the layoffs over the past month.
According to Damera, Eruditus sees 40 employees leaving the startup in a month, and it now added 40 more to the list. Damera further said that out of the 80 people who have left the organisation recently, 40 have submitted their resignations voluntarily.
Talking about details of the affected teams, Damera said, “The other 40, we had to let go off, of which about 15 were from the talent acquisition team and the rest from other teams including marketing.”
Eruditus has laid off about half of its talent acquisition team, which consisted of 30 people before the layoffs. This is in line with the edtech’s slow down strategy, as explained by Eruditus.
Its present workforce stands at around 2,300 employees in India and abroad.
The cofounder said that Eruditus hired around 1,300 people over the last 12 months. However, it plans to hire only around 100-150 more people this year, mostly in the tech and product teams. Damera said that the startup has scaled down its expansion plans to achieve profitability in the near term. He claimed that Eruditus’ core India business is already profitable.
Founded in 2010 by Damera and Chaitanya Kalipatnapu, Eruditus offers executive education programmes with business schools such as MIT, Columbia, Harvard Business School, INSEAD and London Business School, among others, along with Indian institutions such as IIT Kozhikode and IIM Lukhnow.
These courses are typically six to eight months long and are available in on-campus, off-campus and online modes.
Laying Off As A Means To Stay Afloat
The layoffs have come at a time when the SoftBank-funded startup has raised a billion dollars in funding since August 2021. First, it raised $650 Mn in a round which made Eruditus a unicorn. Further, Eruditus raised $350 Mn in debt in March 2022.
Amid growing concerns over reducing funding, many marquee investors, including Eruditus’ backer SoftBank, have advised startups to cut down on costs and strengthen their unit economics. This has resulted in many startups laying off people as a means to achieve that.
Eruditus has joined a growing list of startups that have laid off employees in 2022. So far, 19 startups have laid off 9,039 employees, per Inc42’s Indian Startup Layoff Tracker.
Edtech has become one of the worst-hit segments in terms of startup layoffs amid fears of an incoming funding winter.
Eruditus has become the eighth edtech startup to have laid off employees in 2022, joining the likes of Vedantu and WhiteHat Jr. In all, eight edtech startups have laid off 3,079 employees, or more than a third of the total layoffs, so far in 2022.
