Edtech Startup Cuemath Fires Another 100 Employees To Cut Costs

Peak XV Partners-backed edtech startup CueMath has reportedly fired another 100 employees to bring down its costs. 

“…unfortunately, our revenue and cost trajectories are still divergent from expectations, and our problems are compounded by the bad macro situation around capital availability, particularly for edtech,” Cuemath founder and CEO Manan Khurma told the employees in an email on Friday (August 25), as per a Moneycontrol report.

“This means that we will have to move to a leaner team structure, in which some roles will get redundant. That exercise is being carried out today,” the email reportedly read.

Inc42’s email to Cuemath did not immediately elicit a response till the time of publishing this article.

The development comes three months after the Bengaluru-based edtech startup fired around 100 employees in May this year, within a year of it raising a funding of $57 Mn.

After the May layoffs, Khurma had reportedly told the Cuemath employees saying there wouldn’t be any need for more layoffs. 

“And at that point, I had full conviction in saying that. But clearly, I had underestimated the extent of the turnaround required to get the company into a healthy situation,” Khurma said in his latest mail. 

“For what it’s worth, I and our leadership team worked very hard in the last few weeks to avoid this outcome. But we’ve come to the conclusion that we still have a long way to go and this action is inevitable,” he was quoted as saying.

In May, Khurma also returned as the full-time CEO of the company.

Founded in 2013 by Manan and Jagjit Khurma, Cuemath offers mathematics courses to K-12 students and is present in over 80 countries. The startup is backed by marquee investors like Google, Alpha Wave Incubation, and Lightrock India.

Cuemath’s standalone net loss widened 65.7% year-on-year (YoY) to INR 216.6 Cr in FY22, while its operating revenue jumped 64% to INR 148 Cr. Employee benefit expenses accounted for almost 34% of its total expenses of INR 369.6 Cr in the year.

Cuemath is yet to file its FY23 financial statements.

The edtech sector is one of the worst hit due to the ongoing funding winter. Since 2022, at least 22 edtech startups in the country, including five of the seven edtech unicorns, have fired 9,871 employees, as per Inc42’s layoff tracker.

Many Indian edtech startups have also been involved in controversies. While BYJU’S is in the line of fire for a range of issues, including corporate governance and delay in filing financial statements, last week Inc42 exclusively reported about various allegations levelled by students against Skill-Lync.