New Delhi: As VC money disappears during the economic recession, tech entrepreneurs have laid off over 20,000 employees worldwide since April, including over 8,000 at Indian businesses driven by edtech platforms.
Since April, at least 20,514 workers have lost their jobs at tech firms worldwide, according to layoff aggregator Layoffs.fyi, with the United States topping the pack. According to Nikkei Asia, the figure has doubled in the last two weeks, indicating that the sector’s labor market has deteriorated.
Ironically, this figure excludes contract workers who have lost their jobs as a result of the startup funding freeze. The startup environment, which once turned out unicorns after unicorns, has seen a two-year high in job losses. READ ALSO: Gold prices today, June 3, 2022: Check your city’s yellow metal prices.
More than 15,000 individuals in the IT sector lost their jobs in May alone, as global macroeconomic variables wreaked havoc on businesses, particularly startups. More than 15,000 tech professionals have lost their jobs this month, according to layoff aggregator layoffs.fyi, according to TechCrunch.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic began in March 2020, more than 1.3 lakh employees have been laid off by 718 businesses around the world. Several difficulties confront tech companies, including growing inflation, high-interest rates, economic downturn, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
With a recession on the horizon and financing running out, the issue is only going to get worse. Several major investment firms, including Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Craft Ventures, and Y Combinator, have provided memoranda and footnotes to their portfolio companies and startups on how to deal with the current crisis.
Startups should concentrate on long-term growth, decrease cash burn, lower costs, and accept that an economic recovery could take 18-24 months. Sequoia Money advised its founders to tighten their belts and focus on profitability as capital became scarce.
Large investment firms are now parking their cash in Blockchain/Web3.0 and gaming-based startups, realizing that ‘funding winter’ has now struck following a strong surge of more than two years in the pandemic that allowed Internet-driven entrepreneurs to develop enormously across the spectrum. ALSO READ: Beware of the boarding a female bus, guys! 7,000 men are detained by the railway police for traveling illegally.
Binance Labs, the venture capital and incubation arm of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has announced the closing of a $500 million investment fund to support Blockchain, Web3.0, and value-building technologies. The new fund will put money into projects that will broaden the scope of cryptocurrency applications and promote the use of Web3.0 and Blockchain technologies.
Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), a US-based investment business, previously announced two new funds: a $4.5 billion fund for crypto and Blockchain companies, as well as Web3.0 startups, and a $600 million ‘Games Fund One’ that is only focused on the gaming industry.