Mumbai-based ed-tech startup Lido Learning has announced the shutting down of its operations and has laid off more than 150 employees. The announcement comes in the wake of the company’s alleged struggle to meet financial ends, which the company accepted in an email sent to its employees (associated teachers).
As per the claims of employees, Sahil Sheth who is the founder of the company had informed employees in a virtual town hall earlier this month about the financial constraints that the company is facing due to lack of funding, and also that the company will not be able to pay the salaries for January month and the first week of February as well.
Notably, in September 2021 the company had raised $10 million that was led by Ronnie Screwvala’s Unilazer Ventures. Anupam Mittal of Shaadi.com, Vijay Shekhar Sharma CEO of Paytm, Mensa Brands’ Ananth Naryanan, and JK Tyres’ MD Vikrampati Singhania, BAce Capital, and Picus Capital, are among the top investors in the company. Reportedly the ed-tech has raised $24 million as funding.
What Lido Learning does?
Lido Learning is an indigenous ed-tech platform founded by Sahil Sheth in 2019. It offers live online classes to students of KG to 12th in Maths, Science, Coding, and English with having a maximum of 6 students in a class.
As claimed by the startup, the curriculum has been designed by experts from Standford, Harvard, and IITs. Also, it mentions on its website that every lesson has HD animated videos, interactive games, live quiz competitions in class.
The fired Lido Learning employees even stated that the company has asked them to look for job opportunities. Some of the employees took to LinkedIn to express their displeasure with the company and its behavior. Calling it as his ‘worst experience in the ed-tech industry,’ Rishabh Kumar, who worked with Lido Learning as Assistant Marketing Manager, posted on LinkedIn, “Everything was going well suddenly on 4 Feb 2022, an official townhall has been announced in the morning. The founder (Sahil Sheth) announced that the organization is having no funds to run its business and they are shutting it down.”
“They have no fund to credit salaries, You all will not get the previous month’s salary, We are selling our assets if we get some funds in upcoming months then only people will get their salaries otherwise not,” Kumar added.
A former employee on LinkedIn posted about the company’s irregularities with the payment of salaries and treatment of employees. Juhiee Arora who worked as Talent Acquisition Specialist at Lido Learning for nine months, wrote, “How you have made a team of people, who do not even support or help their employees. This is very shameful I have all the emails and details in written where you have clearly mentioned that I will get my salary, but now you are not replying at all.”
Replying to Arora, another former employee of the company startup Vinay Singh who worked as Talent Acquisition Recruiter, wrote, “LIDO is totally fraud. I also didn’t receive my FNF Settlement amount and 3 months of amount. Now I am not getting a response from email.”
Amidst the ongoing social media stir over the issue relating to firing, there are several companies that have come up extending their help by hiring the laid-off employees of Lido Learning. Alongside, social media users are reacting to the issue.
Seeking fair treatment of teachers, students, and employees of Lido, Nitish Banka, Supreme Court Lawyer, posted on LinkedIn, “I have been informed that the employees and teachers who have put in hard-earned efforts into running this startup LIDO Learning are getting paid due to startup facing funding issues.”
Furthermore, he added, “I want the startup to treat fairly all their employees, students, and teacher or face legal action.”