Digital Entertainment Startup Pocket Aces Fires 50 Employees

Digital entertainment startup Pocket Aces, which owns YouTube channels such as FilterCopy and Dice Media, has reportedly fired a quarter of its employees.

Backed by Sequoia India, Nu Ventures and North Base Media, Pocket Aces laid off 50 of its 200 full-time employees across content, production and post-production teams.

CEO Aditi Shrivastava told ET that Pocket Aces is looking to become profitable in the coming financial year. Shrivastava said the startup would move to a leaner operating model to save costs.

Shrivastava further shared the publication that Pocket Aces would continue to work with some of the impacted employees on a freelance basis for content creation. And for other employees, the startup will help with outplacements. Further, all the impacted employees would receive financial support and health coverage.

Inc42 has reached out to Pocket Aces and the story will be updated as and when the startup responds.

“The creative team will be in-house, but the post-production, design, animation, VFX, music and casting will be outsourced,” she was cited as saying.

Pocket Aces was founded in 2013 by Shrivastava, Ashwin Suresh and Anirudh Pandita. It operates several YouTube channels, the gaming and esports app Loco and the talent management platform Clout. The startup’s website claims to have 8.9 Mn YouTube subscribers, and the Loco app is said to have 8.5 Mn users.

Pocket Aces last raised INR 17 Cr in venture debt from Stride Ventures in January 2021. It has raised close to $20 Mn across funding rounds to date.

The startup would focus on scaling its long-form offerings via Dice Media and slow down creating content for its channels Nutshell and Gobble. However, it plans to focus on creator-led short-form content for Instagram, said the cofounder.

According to Shrivastava, Pocket Aces would hit operating profitability in FY24 as a result of the cost savings from the change in the operating model, looking at a profit of around INR 5 Cr in FY24. She said Pocket Aces was expecting a 20% growth in revenue in FY23.

Pocket Aces is also looking to give its investors exits once it reaches enough scale, as the cofounder stated that the startup does not have any big capital-raising plans.

“We will be working towards giving exits to our investors. We are still figuring out the path to exit for our investors,” Shrivastava was quoted as saying.