Edtech startups such as Masai School, Simplilearn and Relevel are reworking their approach because of the slowdown in the job market, especially for roles such as software development, sales and marketing.
“The funding winter and the larger threat of a looming recession have applied brakes on the hiring plans of the startup sector,” said Kamal Karanth, co-founder of specialist staffing company Xpheno. “With venture capital (VC) funds and investors serving advisories to funded tech startups, hiring funnels have cooled down after over 18 months of hyper action.”
Startups like Swiggy, Meesho, Udaan, Cars24 and others have undertaken layoffs this year to save cash.
In October, only around 11,000 active monthly job openings were posted across startups, data from Xpheno showed. This is in stark contrast to the December 2021 high of 40,000 listings.
Masai School and Simplilearn have been actively trying to expand their recruiting base on the information technology front to larger non-tech companies as well as system integrators. These companies offer tech-focused courses in the areas of web development, backend development, data science, digital marketing, machine learning, DevOps, and business analytics, among others.
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“Although we did our best placement month in November, one thing that has dramatically changed is that in April, we did almost similar numbers to November. But over there, the contribution from the startup ecosystem was roughly around 80% which has now gone down to 20% in November,” Masai School founder and chief executive Prateek Shukla told ET. The Omidyar Network-backed jobtech startup plans to grow revenue to Rs 100 crore in the financial year ended 2023 from about Rs 20 crore in the year-ago period.
Unacademy’s Relevel started off as a skill assessment portal that would test a candidate, suggest an upskilling course, and help with a job within 15 days. In case of no placements, the course fee would be refunded to the candidate, with some conditions in place.
Currently, Relevel is unable to meet its growth expectations, making fewer than 250 placements a month, a person aware of the matter told ET.
Relevel relies on a large set of late- and growth-stage startups in its recruiter base, and like other peers in the space, is also trying to move away from it.
The company declined ET’s request for comment.
In October, Relevel received $20 million from its parent company Unacademy about four months after launch, and claimed to serve over 2,35,000 users and 64 companies – such as Bajaj Finance, Byju’s, Cred, Cultfit, Magicpin, Nestaway, and Nobroker – on its recruiter base at the time.
Its client base of around 315 firms largely consists of startups.
During the last one year, it has offered over a total of 1,530 jobs, another source close to the company said, adding that 80% of the company’s subscribers who got placement offers were freshers.
Sources told ET that Amazon, which tried to enter the jobtech space, has decided to shut down the venture as it did not work out.
The company did not respond to ET’s request for comment.
Mumbai-based edtech UpGrad also tried pilot programs in the job guarantee model but decided it was not scalable. However, corporate upskilling businesses such as Great Learning, UpGrad and Eruditus continue to see good enrollment numbers despite no new job opportunities on the internet economy.
Typically, upskilling platforms help students secure jobs only at bootcamps where they work more closely and on a full-time basis with their trainers.
Scalability problem
UpGrad, unlike rival Great Learning, runs a few boot camps and full-stack development programs that have a job guarantee component to it, but the company does not think it is a scalable product feature.
“Look at the best educational institutions where nobody can guarantee you a job. What we have realized is that we also need to make the learner a party to the success where just enrolling for a course does not mean success. We need to set that expectation right from Day One with all of our learners,” UpGrad co-founder Phalgun Kompalli told ET.
About 30% of UpGrad’s learners currently have over 12-13 years of experience, Kompalli added.
It gets harder for learners to invest in programs without job security, but historically, enrollments at business schools and other post-graduate programs have gone up during recessive cycles.
This was the case during the early 2000s right after the dotcom bubble as well as after the 2007-2008 financial crisis, founders in the upskilling space told ET.
“People want to return to college if the job market is tough, it’s the best time to go and spend time learning,” Eruditus founder and CEO Ashwin Damera said.
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