The decline in startup funding is impacting a range of sectors, with employees being laid off in companies including Unacademy, Vedantu, Eruditus, Cars24, MFine and Lido, among others. Rupeek, a digital-focused gold loan lender, is the latest.
The fintech startup backed by Sequoia and Accel on Tuesday said it has laid off 10-15% of its employees, blaming a subdued macroeconomic environment.
A Rupeek spokesperson said, “The subdued macro economic environment has compelled us to re-calibrate our strategy, take a relook at our costs and make our organisation structure leaner, so as to support our sustenance and growth.”
Bengaluru-based Rupeek raised $34 million in January, in a round led by Lightbox, GGV Capital and Bertelsmann, taking its valuation to $634 million.
More than 8,000 employees have lost jobs at Indian startups led by edtech platforms this year.
According to layoff aggregator Layoffs.fyi, at least 20,514 people have lost their jobs at tech startups globally since April, with the US leading the race. The number has doubled over the past two weeks, indicating that the job scenario in the sector has taken a turn for the worse, Nikkei Asia reported.
Startups that were hoping to raise funds riding on last year’s momentum are now finding it difficult to bag high valuations with a growing focus on unit economics and VCs becoming conservative in their investments.
“Unfortunately, while this restructuring was imperative, we are yet to ascertain when the industry will hit normalcy and recover fully. However, I would like to assure you that the gold loan industry continues to grow stronger than before, and our business model is structurally well placed to continue growing at a healthy speed. We have grown more than 2X in the last two quarters,” according to an internal email sent by Rupeek founder and CEO Sumit Maniyar to his employees.
Rupeek claimed on June 2 that it will offer gold loans at 0.49% interest per month, the lowest rate ever offered by any company in the country.
Bengaluru-based Rupeek began operations in 2015, offering all its services at the doorstep of the customer — from collecting the gold to assaying to disbursing cash at the doorstep of the borrower and also returning the pledged gold to the same place on maturity.