Mohalla Tech shuts Jeet11, lays off 5% of its employees
BENGALURU: Sharechat-owner Mohalla Tech Pvt. Ltd on Friday shut its fantasy gaming platform Jeet11 and fired workers at the unit, joining a series of tech startups that have laid off workers to reduce costs.
The Google and Temasekbacked unicorn, which has reduced its staff strength of 2,200 by 5% with the closure, said it would continue hiring across roles and functions to support growth.
“As a standard business practice, we periodically evaluate our strategies. We can confirm that we are ceasing operations of Jeet11 and have reorganized some of our functions, which meant the movement of this talent within teams and a few employee exits. This process has impacted less than 5% of our employees,” Mohalla Tech, which also runs the short video platform Moj, said in a statement.
In June, Mohalla Tech raised $78 million (about ₹633 crore) in a series H funding round from Google’s parent Alphabet and Temasek Holdings at a valuation of about $4.9 billion.
Sharechat was founded in 2015 by Farid Ahsan, Ankush Sachdeva and Bhanu Pratap Singh. It launched Jeet11 in February 2020 to take on the popular fantasy gaming platform Dream11, allowing users to bet on cricket and football matches.
In recent weeks, several tech startups reduced staff amid a funding freeze in a challenging
economy. Earlier this week, news aggregation unicorn Dailyhunt and short video platform Josh’s parent firm Verse Innovation Pvt. Ltd laid off 5% of its 3,000-strong workforce.
Last month, Softbank-backed edtech unicorn Unacademy fired 10% of its workforce, or about 350 employees, in a third round of layoffs within a year, signalling the challenges ahead for the edtech sector.
Underscoring the turmoil in the sector, Prosus-backed edtech firm Brainly, an online community learning platform, is said to have laid off a portion of its employees globally, including around 30 people in India in November, Vccircle reported.