Cuemath announces layoffs, founder Manan Khurma reassumes CEO role

The decision has impacted 100 out of about 800 roles, across functions, a spokesperson for the Sequoia Capital India-backed startup told ET.

Founder and chairman Manan Khurma, who took to LinkedIn to make the announcement, also said that current CEO Vivek Sunder will be transitioning to an advisory role. “Our current CEO, Vivek Sunder — a phenomenal hyper-scale business operator — will transition from his full-time role to continue to work with me and the team, in an advisory capacity, on his many areas of expertise — like acquisition funnels and GTM strategies,” Khurma said in the post.

Sunder, who was earlier the COO of Swiggy, had joined Cuemath in September 2021, with Khurma taking on the Chairman’s mantle.

Khurma will return as chief executive of the company, the post noted.

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The layoffs, Khurma added, have been carried out to better Cuemath’s business metrics, such as retention rates.

“While this will impact some talented people who have contributed a lot to Cuemath, we are committed to supporting our affected colleagues with everything they need to ensure a smooth transition into the next phase of their professional journey,” he said.

The Bengaluru-based startup last raised $57 million, in a round led by US-based Alpha Wave Global, at a valuation of $407 million. Its valuation has doubled since that last funding round in December 2020.

“Valuations have become more realistic with rationalisation hitting the market; only those growth-stage startups with solid business fundamentals can now establish trust with VCs,” Sunder had said back then.

Founded in 2013 by Khurma, Cuemath is an after-school online math tutoring platform for kindergarten to 12th-grade students.