16,398 employees were laid off by over 100 Indian startups and technology companies in 2023 (as of December 26) across major and emerging tech hubs in the country including Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and others, according to the latest data from layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi.
While Paytm trimmed its workforce by 1,000 employees, Byju’s fired 2,500 employees, JioMart sacked 1,000 employees, and Swiggy laid off 380 employees this year, data showed. Other technology-led companies that sacked a significant employee count this year were, Milkbasket firing 400 employees, 600 employees by Skill Lync, around 600 by 1K Kirana, 700 employees by ShareChat, 300 by Adda247, 350 by MPL, 300 by Spinny, 300 by WayCool, 251 by Meesho, over 300 by Dunzo, 300 by Pristyn Care, 200 by Ola, etc.
According to the data from global market intelligence platform Tracxn, Indian tech startup ecosystem saw a significant funding decline of 72 per cent in 2023 to $7 billion (till December 5), compared to $25 billion in the previous year, making it the lowest-funded year in the last five years.
Consequently, India dropped from 4th place in 2022 and 2021 to 5th place among the highest-funded geographies globally in 2023. The last quarter (Q4) recorded the lowest funding of $957 million to date, marking it the lowest-funded quarter since Q3 2016.
The decline was primarily due to the biggest drop in late-stage funding, by over 73 per cent to $4.2 billion in 2023 from $15.6 billion in 2022. The number of over $100 million rounds recorded were only 17, dropping by 69 per cent compared to last year.
Among sectors, fintech, driven by increasing smartphone penetration and government initiatives towards a cashless economy, received $2.1 billion in funding in 2023, a decrease from $5.8 billion from the same period last year. Among companies, PhonePe stood out as the top-funded company in the sector, securing a total of $850 million in four Series D rounds which made up for 38 per cent of the funding received by the sector.