upGrad subsidiary Campus lays off 30% of workforce amid funding crunch

This is the second upGrad arm to have recently laid off staff. Last December, Harappa Education, which upGrad had bought for Rs 300 cr in July 2022, let go of 70 people

A funding slowdown has forced Edtech unicorn upGrad to lay off 30 per cent of the workforce--nearly 120 employees--at its subsidiary ‘Campus’, which has a strength of about 300 people.

This is the second upGrad subsidiary to have laid off employees recently. Last December, Harappa Education, which upGrad had acquired for Rs 300 crore in July 2022, had let go of 70 people, or about 30 per cent of its staff.

Queries sent by Business Standard to upGrad did not elicit an immediate response.

After acquiring Impartus, a video-learning solutions provider, for Rs 150 crore in a cash-and-stock deal back in May 2021, the Ronnie Screwvala-backed edtech firm rebranded it to ‘upGrad Campus’. Following the acquisition, Impartus co-founder Amit Mahensaria took over as chief executive of Campus.

Arjun Mohan, upGrad’s former CEO, had also stepped down last month after a three-year stint at the firm.

The firm’s biggest expense in FY22 was on advertising and promotions, at Rs 393 crore. The amount is almost twice the Rs 205 crore spent in FY21, shows data accessed by business intelligence platform Tofler.

Further, upGrad’s consolidated net loss widened almost three-fold to Rs 627 crore in FY22 from Rs 211.1 crore in FY21. This came even as the unicorn’s revenue grew 111 per cent, from Rs 328 crore in FY21 to Rs 692 crore in FY22.

The news of the layoffs comes at a time when the company announced it would hire more than 1,400 people between November 2022 and March 2023 in India and for offices outside. In the past months, upGrad had also signed new leases for 335,000 sq ft of space across four cities – Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune and Noida.

upGrad competes with the likes of Simplilearn, Coursera, 2U, edX, Chegg, Skillsoft, and Byju’s. The firm raised $210 million in funding in August 2022, raising its valuation to $2.25 billion.

Singapore's Temasek Group, IFC Asset Management and James Murdoch's Lupa Systems, among others are some notable backers of the firm.

upGrad has joined the likes of many other edtech firms letting go of employees amid a funding slowdown. According to reports, Byju's laid off 15 per cent of its employees from its engineering team last month, as the company continues phased redundancies to remain growth-oriented amid a global economic meltdown. The firm had, in October last year, also laid off nearly 2,500 people, or 5 per cent of its workforce of 50,000, as part of an “optimization” plans amid steep losses.

Edtech firm LEAD School also laid off around 100 employees earlier in January. Edtech major Vedantu cut a similar number of employees at the time. Unacademy-owned Relevel dropped 40 employees.

SoftBank-backed edtech major Unacademy said in November of 2022 it was also laying off 350 people or 10 per cent of its 3,500 workforce.