Ed-tech firm FrontRow lays off 75% of staff, day after Byju's move

Second round of sacking to save costs reduces FrontRow's headcount to 45 people

Education technology start-up FrontRow has laid off 130 employees, making the announcement a day after industry giant Byju’s said it would let go nearly 2,500, or 5 per cent, of its staff as part of an “optimisation” plan.

FrontRow, which is focused on non-academic learning, is laying off almost 75 per cent of its workforce in engineering, product and sales and marketing. The move is part of the Bengaluru-based firm’s plan to reconsider cost structures. FrontRow sacked about 145 full-time and contractual employees in May this year. Its headcount has reduced to about 45 people after the second round of layoff.

“We’re extremely proud of the team that got together to build the future of non-academic learning, and worked tirelessly and built some of the most exciting learning products that exist,” Ishaan Preet Singh, co-founder of FrontRow, told 'Business Standard'. “Unfortunately, as we realised that a sales and marketing-led approach to this market didn’t work with our current delivery model, we had to let go a large part of our team.”

FrontRow, which was founded in 2020, provides online courses in cricket, singing, photography and filmmaking by experts. These include cricketers Suresh Raina, Yuzvendra Chahal, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Bollywood singer Neha Kakkar, and comedian Biswa Kalyan Rath.

FrontRow said its learning material delivered and experts aim to hone the skills of India’s youth. “We helped millions of learners in the past 18 months along the way as we scaled rapidly over the past year. Unfortunately, over the past couple of months, it’s also become clear that the business fundamentals were still not working despite our best efforts,” said Singh.

“However, our belief in the market and the need is still extremely strong. There are millions who want to get better at their passions and they have been massively underserved in India and beyond. We’ll continue to solve for them albeit in a revamped avatar. We remain bullish on the space and what we’re building and have sufficient capital and a great team to continue to solve this problem.”

Valuations of Indian edtech companies are under stress, prompting layoffs. Unicorn Vedantu laid off 724 employees this year, according to sources. 

Byju’s said its layoffs are part of an “optimisation” plan. In June, it also laid off about 500 employees at its group companies, WhiteHat Jr and Toppr. Earlier this year, SoftBank-backed edtech unicorn Unacademy laid off more than 1,000 employees. All such layoffs are seen as a focus on profitability, consolidation and cost-cutting drive in the edtech space.