New Delhi, Aug 4: Google and Temasek-backed social media unicorn Sharechat is closing a $16 million fundraise, while firing about 5 percent of its workforce (around 30-40 employees) after a bi-annual performance review, according to sources.The fundraise is an extension of its convertible debt round in which it has already raised $49 million from Tencent and existing investors such as Lightspeed. The additional $16 million has been committed by a Singaporean fund, said sources.
A company spokesperson said “We have launched our mid year performance cycle and as a usual practice, some employees are impacted on the basis of performance. This accounts for less than 5% of our workforce. We have a number of open positions and we continue looking for high quality talent across functions”.
This comes amid a broader tightening of fresh funding to technology startups and a few weeks after Koo, a social media startup backed by the likes of Accel and popular Silicon Valley investor Naval Ravikant, shut down.
Over the past year and a half, Sharechat has fired about 850 people in successive rounds of cost cutting. Moneycontrol reported in early 2023 that two of the company’s co-founders had quit amid a broader hollowing out of its senior management cadre. Later, the co-founder duo raised $3 million in funding for their robotics startup.