- Monday, May 05, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
WHILE Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has patted the Indian start-up ecosystem on international platforms saying it has done well, latest findings do not present a picture of optimism.
According to business information website Crunchbase, about 22,000 workers in the tech and start-up sector, along with over 12,000 in the Indian start-up ecosystem, have lost employment this year as companies that benefited from the pandemic-time boom are finding it difficult in times of economic meltdown.
It has been reported that the start-ups are finding fundraising an arduous task as their valuations have headed south in an environment which is not too rosy.
A number of unicorns such as Ola, Vedantu, Unacademy, Mobile Premier League and Cars24 have sacked people citing “restructuring and cost cutting”. Also, those like Blinkit, FarEye, BYJU’s, etc. have also laid off employees.
The Hindustan Times cited a report saying the Indian start-up sector may see more than 60,000 job losses as they navigate through the “funding winter”.
The report mentioned industry experts who said that at least 50,000 start-up employees are likely to lose jobs in 2022 in the name of “restructuring and cost cutting” while certain start-ups continue receiving millions in funding.
Even global firms such as Netflix, financial services company Robinhood and many crypto platforms, which have been battered by the economic headwinds, have sacked staff.
Investors should be ready for a historic slide in the stock market to start filtering through to start-ups over the next few quarters, a partner of US-based venture capital firm Sapphire Ventures said, according to Bloomberg.
“We are going to be in for some hard times ahead — I don’t know if it’s going to be one quarter, two quarters, three quarters or more,” Cathy Gao told Bloomberg Television in an interview. “My message to everyone is this is an opportunity to look inwards, get your house in shape and be ready for the future.”
