Startup layoffs: Edtech company Teachmint fires 70 more employees

Teachmint, a Lightspeed Ventures-backed edtech startup, has announced a second round of layoffs in six months, impacting 70 more employees. The decision was made to reduce costs, as the company aims to streamline its operations and eliminate role redundancies.

Mihir Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Teachmint, discussed the layoffs during a town hall meeting on May 4. Gupta emphasized that the job cuts were not performance-based, but rather due to redundant roles within the company. Although Teachmint has confirmed the layoffs, it has not officially disclosed the number of affected employees.

The edtech company is offering three months of payroll support, six months of continued health insurance benefits for both individuals and families and ongoing access to mental health counsellors. Additionally, Teachmint is providing outplacement assistance and accelerating the vesting of ESOPs (employee stock option plans) for eligible employees.

With this round of layoffs, Teachmint has now let go of more than 110 employees since December 2021, when it dismissed 45 workers. The company follows in the footsteps of other edtech startups such as Unacademy, Vedantu, and Byju's, which have also implemented multiple rounds of layoffs.

The edtech's earnings from operations in FY 2021-22 was Rs 80 lakhs and the company experienced a loss of Rs 131.7 crore for the same fiscal year. In 2021, the company acquired four businesses – MyClassCampus, Teachmore, Teachee's India team, and Airlearn – to rapidly expand and diversify its operations.

Teachmint was founded in 2020 by Mihir Gupta, Payoj Jain, Divyansh Barodia, and Anshuman Kumar. It is a mobile-first, video-first teaching platform designed to digitize classrooms. The startup has secured $118 million in funding from global venture capital firms like Rocketship.VC, Vulcan, Better Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, and was last valued at $500 million.

Teachmint introduced a unique ESOP called the "Continuous Liquidity Plan" in November 2021 to retain talent amidst a competitive startup job market. This allows employees to sell their vested stock options at any time, instead of waiting for traditional events such as funding rounds, buybacks, or founder decisions.

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