Mohalla Tech, the parent company of homegrown social media platform ShareChat and short-video platform Moj, has laid off around 5 per cent of its workforce and shut down fantasy gaming platform Jeet11.
“As a standard business practice, we periodically re-evaluate our strategies. We can confirm that we are discontinuing Jeet11’s operations and we have restructured some of our functions, which This means there has been a movement of talent within the teams and some employees have moved out. This process has impacted less than 5 percent of our workforce,” the company said in a statement.
The Bengaluru-based company employs over 2200 people across verticals, which means the layoffs have affected over 100 employees.
Layoffs and operations optimization initiatives reflect an industry-wide trend where start-ups are moving towards tighter cost controls and operational efficiencies to survive the funding winter and extend their runway as much as possible to weather the recession Could
Notably, the developments in ShareChat come just five months after the company announced a $255 million funding round from a host of marquee investors including Google, Times Group and Temasek. The $520 million multi-tranche funding round valued the company at $5 billion, making it one of the most valuable start-ups in the country.
“We continue to focus on driving strong growth and hiring across a variety of functions and roles in line with our plans. To be successful as India’s fastest growing social media company, we regularly assess our strategy and make necessary changes to achieve our vision,” the company statement said.
Layoffs have become rampant in the tech space, including the start-up ecosystem, which has been hit by a funding winter caused by rising interest rates, tightening liquidity and a slowdown in tech globally. Most start-up leaders believe that the tough macroeconomic environment may persist for another 12-18 months or even longer.
Since the beginning of 2022, Indian start-ups are set to lay off over 16,000 employees, according to industry estimates. In fact, Dailyhunt, which operates in the same domain as Sharechat, earlier this week laid off 5 per cent of its 3,000 employees. VerSe Innovation Pvt Ltd, the parent firm of Dailyhunt and short video app Josh, has called it a “regular bi-annual performance management cycle” that VerSe will roll out. The company had raised $805 million in April this year under Series J funding round at a valuation of $5 billion.
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