Edtech Downfall Continues: Now, DUX Education To Cease Operations By April

K-12 edtech startup DUX Education is closing down operations in April 2023 owing to the prevailing funding crunch in the Indian startup ecosystem.

The shutting down of business is a consequence of its failure to raise funds and thus, the startup will operate until March 2023, Mint reported.

DUX’s founder Rohit Jain confirmed the development to Inc42 by saying, “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. Parents and students are dependent on us to help us sail them through this academic year and, hence, the operations will continue till March 31.” 

Jain also said that DUX’s founding team has not drawn salaries for the last six months to ensure no layoff happens in the firm. 

Founded during the pandemic year 2020 by Jain, Udit Chaturvedi and Manika Tiwari, the Bengaluru-based edtech startup offers school curriculum-based online classes to K-12 students. 

“We created the right systems and processes from Day 1 and were running our operations at 10% manpower compared to our nearest competitor operating at a similar scale,” Jain added.  

During the pandemic year, the startup claimed to have enrolled more than 15K students. Of this, more than half of its students came from Tier-I and Tier-II cities, while 40% were from Tier-III and beyond. 

The startup said that it has a headcount of nine employees, who are managing more than 250 online batches. Dux further asserted that it has raised INR 2 Cr from angel investment firm Malpani Ventures.

Prior to founding the startup, the three founders worked in companies including Zoomcar, Ola, EY, MFine, PhonePe, Accenture and McKinsey.

With this closure announcement, DUX has become the latest entrant to the growing list of startups that have closed operations. A few days ago, meat delivery D2C startup Fipola ceased operations. 

While, in the edtech segment, we have seen LIDO Learning, Udayy, Crejo.Fun, SuperLearn, and Qin1 shutting down in 2022. 

Further, edtech giants too have laid off more than 8,000 employees since January last year, according to Inc42 layoff tracker. 

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