Exclusive: Accel-Backed Breathe Well-being Fires 100 Employees

SUMMARY

Breathe Well-being fired about 100 employees in a restructuring exercise last week, sources said, adding that the number could be as high as 120

However, cofounder and CEO Rohan Verma said that the startup has let go of 90 employees from its India team. He added that the startup has recently closed a fresh funding round

Breathe Well-being, which helps prevent, manage and reverse Type 2 diabetes, plans to focus only the global markets, especially the US, going ahead

Delhi NCR-based Breathe Well-being fired about 100 employees in a restructuring exercise last week, sources told Inc42.

The reason behind the layoffs was that the startup has not been able to raise fresh funding and only has a runway of 6 months to 1 year, the sources said, adding that the number of employees impacted by the restructuring exercise could be as high as 120.

However, cofounder and CEO Rohan Verma told Inc42 that the startup has let go of 90 out of the 290 employees in its India team. He also refuted the allegations of lack of funding and said that the startup has closed a fresh round of funding, which will be announced soon.

The layoffs impacted employees across departments, including technology, marketing, human resources, among others, with the sales team being affected the most, the sources added.

Breathe Well-being is shifting its focus to the US market. It has stopped onboarding new users in India, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and other markets, except the US, they added.

“They have been facing issues with the pricings in India and other countries. They are going to cater to the existing customers and then eventually pull the plug in the next six months. The US market is giving them results and they will focus there,” one of the sources said.

To this, Verma said that the startup has decided to focus on the global markets, especially the US.

Founded in 2020 by Verma and Aditya Kaicker, Breathe Well-being helps prevent, manage and reverse Type 2 diabetes. It claims to offer an easy but effective alternative to medicines to achieve this.

Besides offering severance pay to the impacted employees, Verma said that the startup is providing them career counselling and offering job placement assistance.

The restructuring comes almost three years after Inc42 exclusively reported that Breathe Well-being laid off around 50 employees.

The startup last raised $6.1 Mn in its pre-Series B funding round co-led by 3one4 Capital, Accel and General Catalyst. FounderBank Capital and Supermorpheus also took part in the funding round.

The startup has raised a total of funding over $10 Mn till date and also counts Scott Shleifer, former top boss at Tiger Global, and Y Combinator among its backers.