BENGALURU: Edtech start-up Udayy, which started in April 2020 during the pandemic period, has shut down its operations and also laid off 100 employees. Ever since the schools and colleges started opening in a phased manner after two years of online classes, the edtech industry, especially online education platforms, have either started offline classes to grab the market, laid off many of its employees due to a capital crunch or restructured operations.
Udayy had raised $2.5 million in a seed round from Falcon Edge’s Alpha Wave and Info Edge Ventures. It also raised $10 million in a new round led by Norwest. Udayy co-founder Saumya Yadav told TNIE that they shut down operations in April 2022 since kids started going back to school. “We were conducting online live learning classes, and we taught kids between grades 1 and 8. We were seeing great traction during the pandemic as 5,000 kids were enrolled in our classes,” said Yadav, adding that about 95% of its business came from teaching English classes.
Yadav said that all 100 employees are placed in different companies now. “Teachers were given severance packages. The pandemic was really good for us but we couldn’t survive after it. Investors were very supportive and we are returning $8.5 million to them,” she said. Edtech companies such as Unacademy, FrontRow and Vedantu have laid off many employees in recent times. Recently, Unacademy founder Gaurav Munjal told his employees that winter is here.
Talking about layoffs in the edtech industry, Yadav said people are focusing on profitability now compared to growth. “They hired many people as they will help them lead growth and now market conditions are such that capital is drying up. Start-ups need to figure out the path to profitability and they have cut down expenses and inefficiencies,” she said.