2023 sees 15% more start-up/ tech layoffs than 2022, majority in edtech

Job losses among start-up or technology companies rose 15 per cent in 2023 over the previous year. 

More than 16,000 people lost their jobs in total, according to data from Layoffs.fyi, a website tracking job cuts in the technology sector. The website collates data based on media reports. While not an exact measure of job losses, it can be considered broadly indicative of the trend. It primarily covers jobs lost in the start-up space rather than mature technology companies. 

On average, at least 45 people lost their jobs daily based on data collated by the website. This is 15.3 per cent higher than the 14,224 layoffs recorded in the previous year (chart 1).

A majority of these layoffs were in Bangalore, the tech capital of India. Next was Gurugram (2,295), Mumbai (1,600) and Noida (1,420).
 

Startup funding was also hit by a slump this year, according to data from Tracxn. In 2023, startups received $8.1 billion when 16,398 people lost their jobs. Last year, they received $25.9 billion when 14,224 were laid off.

Recently, Paytm, a financial technology (fintech) company, reportedly laid off 1,000 employees. The sector recorded a total of 2,141 layoffs this year.

Around 4,700 people in the ed-tech sector were laid off, followed by the food (2,765), finance (2,141), retail (1,772), consumer (1,488), and healthcare (991) sectors (chart 2).

Funding of ed-tech startups declined by 88.9 per cent from $2.5 billion in 2022 to $0.3 billion in 2023. For food and agriculture tech startups, it was 73.5 per cent and 66.1 per cent for fintech startups in the same period.

Consumer-based startups received the maximum funding of $3.9 billion in 2023, followed by retail ($2.3 billion), fintech ($2 billion), enterprise applications ($1.7 billion) and transportation and logistics tech ($1.6 billion).

Globally, 261,847 people lost their jobs. Nearly 70 per cent of the people laid off were in the United States, followed by India, Germany, Sweden  and the United Kingdom (chart 3).