Edtech Startup Skill-Lync Undertakes Another Round Of Layoffs, Fires 225 Employees

Upskilling startup Skill-Lync has conducted a second round of layoffs which has impacted nearly 20% of its workforce, or around 225 employees.

The layoffs, which commenced on June 27, were undertaken by the company to reduce costs, streamline operations and ‘limit future content and production investments,’ as per an Entrackr report.

“This decision was not taken lightly, and we have done our utmost to ensure that the process was as transparent and fair as possible for the employees involved,” said Skill-Lync cofounder Suryanarayanan Paneerselvam in a statement to Techcrunch. 

Paneerselvam also said that C-Suite executives were not impacted by the layoffs. However, there was no clarity on which specific teams and positions were impacted as part of the mass firings. 

However, sources were quoted as saying that the startup delayed the salaries of the impacted employees. Paneerselvam denied the claim saying that Skill-Lync was making salary payments but refrained from commenting about the severance package and whether the impacted employees had received their last due payments. 

Responding to reports of depleting runway, he added that the company has adequate runway to achieve operational profitability by Q4 2023, and to sustain its operations even after that. 

However, this is not the first time that the edtech platform has conducted layoffs. In April this year, the Chennai-headquartered startup slashed its headcount by more than 400. Back then, Paneerselvam had placed the blame of layoffs on macroeconomic conditions.

Inc42 also reported then that the startup was facing a capital shortage since November 2022, and had just INR 120 Cr at the end of the same month. 

Founded in 2015 by Paneerselvam and Sarangarajan V, Skill-Lync offers offline and online courses for engineering students and graduates across all disciplines and provides job opportunities to students upon programme completion. 

The startup claims to have so far upskilled more than 30,000 students from 80 countries, including India. Skill-Lync competes with Great Learning, Coding Ninjas, Hero Vired, Pesto Tech and Scaler Academy.

Backed by Iron Pillar and Y Combinator, the company has so far raised $20 Mn in funding across multiple rounds. But despite the big-ticket fundraises, the company has failed to reign in its losses which ballooned 6X YoY to INR 140 Cr in the fiscal year 2021-22 (FY22).

This new round of layoffs comes when the entire Indian startup ecosystem has been gripped by a funding winter and capital is hard to come by.

The downturn has made investors wary, while Indian startup founders have resorted to drastic cost-cutting measures to tide over the current inclement market conditions and extend their runway. 

Skill-Lync joins a growing list of Indian startups that have undertaken layoffs in recent days. On Thursday, Sachin Bansal-led fintech startup Navi Technologies fired around 200 employees across multiple departments. A day prior, agritech startup WayCool laid off 300 employees as part of a restructuring exercise.

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