upGrad-owned Harappa fires 30% of its employees: Report
- ByStartupStory | January 4, 2023
New year, same problems. As funding dries up and interest in online education declines, India’s edtech industry continues to suffer. The latest to suffer is Harappa Education, a higher education and skill-based learning platform with headquarters in Delhi that Ronnie Screwvala’s UpGrad purchased for Rs 300 crore last July.
60 employees have been let go by Harappa, or 30% of its 200-person workforce, according to those acquainted with the situation. The content sector has seen the majority of the layoffs, which were first reported in the final week of December. No extra severance payments have been provided to the impacted employees, who have been instructed to provide a month’s notice.
Meanwhile, Harappa has not yet provided an official justification for the firings. “This is only the first round of layoffs; there may be more,” a source said. They said, “Team leaders have been instructed to inform those sacked of the decision.”
In 2018, Pramath Raj Sinha and Shreyasi Singh founded Harappa, which has grown to 600,000 students across B2B and B2C segments. The Indian School of Business was founded by Pramath Raj Sinha. Nearly 70% of these users were added within the previous 12 months. “This year, we more than tripled our top line to roughly Rs 75 crore, and we’re almost profitable. “We’re the only company in India that prioritizes producing its own content over redistributing third-party content,” Sinha said.
Harappa also announced its entry into the US in November 2022, with intentions to upskill 55,000 managers in that time. The platform’s enterprise branch claimed to have 250,000 learners spread over 200+ businesses.
“Job-linked upskilling is the future of lifelong learning for working professionals at every stage. At Harappa, we have built this expertise over decades of rich experience. Our programs, with their sharp blend of skills, will make the right connections across the US,” Ronnie Screwvala, Co-founder & Chairperson, UpGrad, said in a statement at the time.
The startup has now added its name to a lengthy list of Indian edtech firms that have let go of staff members in the previous 10 to 12 months. These include, among others, BYJU’S, Toppr, WhiteHat Jr., Unacademy, Vedanta, and Practically. According to a Tracxn analysis, edtech start-ups have let go of between 7,000 and 8,000 staff during this time. Due to the ongoing capital crunch and changing consumer preferences, several players, including Lido Learning, Udayy, Crejo.Fun, SuperLearn, etc., have also shut down their operations.
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