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Edtech startup DUX Education will stop operations in April 2023 after struggling to raise funds amid a funding winter in the startup ecosystem.

The Bengaluru-based firm will continue to operate till March 31, 2023, Rohit Jain, founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of DUX Education told YourStory in response to emailed queries.

“We realised six months back that raising funds has become difficult, and we had to manage operations. As such, we took the call to cease operations,” Jain said.

He added that as parents and students are dependent on the edtech firm to sail them through this academic year, it will operate till the end of March.

VCCircle was the first to report about DUX Education shutting down its business.

The development comes at a time when edtech unicorns are witnessing losses, laying-off employees, slowing expansion plans, and trying to burn as little cash as possible amid a funding crunch.

DUX Education would join startups like SuperLearn, Qin1, Lido Learning, Udayy, and Crejo.Fun that have shut shop. 

DUX raised a total funding of $271,000 over two rounds, according to data research platform Tracxn. It is backed by nine investors including Malpani Ventures’ Aniruddha Malpani.

DUX ranks 64th among 950 active competitors, which include Unacademy, Physics Wallah, and Vedantu.

“We created the right systems and processes from day one and were running our operations at 10% manpower compared to our nearest competitor operating at similar scale. There were only nine people in the company managing more than 250 batches,” Jain said. 

He added that the founders stopped withdrawing salaries six months back to ensure there were no layoffs in the edtech firm.

Jain co-founded DUX Education with Udit Chaturvedi in 2020. It is a personalised after-school tutoring platform for students in Classes 3 to 12. The startup aimed to solve the problem of affordability, accessibility, and engagement, and create a “teacher-first world” where online learning went beyond a lecture.