Startups’ pink slip count falls to 10,000 amid funding blues

Indian startups have laid off about 10,000 employees so far in 2024 with funding across stages continuing to be constrained, while companies hire talent cautiously with a focus on improving bottom lines early on in their lifecycle.

The first half of 2024 has been better than the last six months of 2023, when around 15,000 workers were laid off, and the first half of 2023, when 21,000 lost their jobs, according to data from Longhouse Consulting.

Startups are also letting go of people more quietly and gradually compared with last year, industry executives said. About 40-50% of the layoffs this year have been so-called ‘silent layoffs,’ where the firm did not make an official announcement or made the cuts in smaller batches, citing various reasons such as underperformance, said Anshuman Das, cofounder and chief executive of Longhouse Consulting and talent solutions firm Careernet. This compares with about 20% silent layoffs last year.

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