Notably, in April this year, the
company had raised $805 million from investors, including CPP Investments, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Board, Luxor Capital, Sumeru Ventures and Sofina Group, in a round that valued the company at $5 billion.
Confirming the latest development, VerSe co-founder Umang Bedi told ET: “Given the current economic climate, like other businesses, we’ve evaluated our strategic priorities. Considering the long-term viability of the business and our people, we have taken steps to implement our regular bi-annual performance management cycle and made performance and business considerations to streamline our costs and our teams. This has impacted 5% of our 3,000 strong workforce.”
“In addition, to ensure long-term profitable growth, we have exercised fiscal and employee prudence and implemented an 11% salary cut for all individuals with salaries above 10 lakh per annum. We remain extremely committed and bullish across our entire family of apps — Josh, Dailyhunt and PublicVibe — to drive profitable growth,” he added.
VerSe Innovation launched Josh in 2020, after Chinese short-video platform TikTok was banned by the Indian government. Earlier this year, TikTok’s parent Bytedance, which was one of the investors in VerSe, sold its stake to other investors.
With these layoffs, VerSe Innovation joins a list of tech startups and even Big Tech companies that have undertaken cost rationalisation measures amid a slowdown in funding in the sector. In the quarter ended September 30, funding for Indian startups fell to $2.7 billion, from nearly $12 billion during the same period last year, according to data from Venture Intelligence.
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