The US-based artificial intelligence (AI) platform 6sense has laid off 10 per cent of its global workforce. Over the past few days, nearly 150 employees received termination letters, Moneycontrol reported.

It was reported that members from the company's content, design, editing, product, sales, marketing and engineering teams were handed the pink slip by their respective managers over a 15-minute zoom call.  

The employees were told that this decision was taken due to the ‘uncertain macroeconomic environment’. As a part of their severance package, the staffers were offered the option to encash their privileged leaves (PLs). 

Since March 2020, 1.25 lakh employees have been laid off by around 718 start-ups globally. According to data compiled by layoffs.fyi, a tracker that compiles information about unemployment globally, 43,399 start-up employees have been laid off across the world since April 1st 2022, of which over 13 per cent people were fired by Indian start-ups.

Over the past several months, brands like Byju’s, Ola and Unacademy have been in the news for laying off staff. The edtech space has seen a high number of layoffs as schools reopened and people preferred physical education over virtual learning.

Edtech unicorn Unacademy fired 1,150 people in two phases this year, while Vedantu fired 624 in May 2022. Byju's-owned Toppr and Whitehat Jr fired around 350 and 300 people respectively in June 2022.

Other sectors in the start-up space also witnessed layoffs. In May 2022, Bengaluru-based digital healthcare provider MFine fired 600 people, which was almost 75 per cent of its workforce. Pre-owned cars e-commerce platform Cars24, too, fired 600 people in May 2022. 

This unfortunate trend is becoming more pronounced amid the globaly funding winter across the start-up ecosystem, forcing many startups to drastically cut down their operating costs. Letting go of people is one of the fastest ways to achieve this cost reduction.