Deepika Padukone, Raftaar Backed Startup Fires 150 Employees Over Email; No Severance Package Offered

As many as 150 employees have been laid off by FrontRow over an email, apparently for the shortage of funds. 

What’s even more shocking is that these employees have been laid off over an email.

FrontRow is backed by Deepika Padukone, and UnAcademy founder Gaurav Munjal.

This is not all – read on to find out what’s going down at FrontRow!

FrontRow Fires 150 Employees Over Email; More Employees Tender Resignations

After this mass firing of employees by the learning and community platform, 150 more employees gave in their resignations as well.

This has now reduced the workforce at FrontRow to 100 from 450 in three days. 

As per an employee close to the development, many employees received emails and were told that their services were no longer required. Another employee has said that the employees who were fired were not given any information prior to the actual layoff. They also weren’t asked to serve a notice period.

Allegations Against FrontRow

Four employees have revealed that the lower-than-average quality of Frontrow’s products slashed the revenue, which led to the company having to cut salaries and fire employees, especially those working in sales.

As per the employee, “They were losing their business because their service was absolutely useless. But employees from the sales team were blamed for not being able to sell such a waste product. When customers asked for refunds, our managers used to blame us saying we were urging customers to ask for refunds. The company was in a bad shape.”

Employees have alleged that they weren’t allowed to work for the full month, in order to not have to pay the full money. Additionally, salaries were lowered by about 50 percent. 

Mass Firing Employees In EdTech

At the beginning of April, we reported that Unacademy has laid off around 1,000 employees as part of a cost-cutting exercise. About 300 of the 1,000 sacked employees were educators on contracts, while the rest were in sales, business, and other functions.

Most of those laid off were part of the content sales and business development teams for the core test preparation product. They were allegedly given just an hour to accept the company’s offer of 2 months’ severance.

Nearly half a dozen of those affected said that they were not informed about the decision. It was only after being unable to log into their Slack accounts that some found out they were being let go.