VC-backed start-up Qyuki downsizes, shuts offices
The digital media company has cut down its workforce by 30% and has shut some of its offices in India due to its inability to raise funds, say industry sources
Qyuki Digital Media, a data-driven content creation company founded by filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, musician A R Rahman and late Samir Bangara, has downsized by 30% and has shut some of its offices in India due to their inability to raise funds, exchange4media has learnt from sources.
According to industry insiders, the company, which began in 2012 with an aim to discover and invest in India’s most influential leaders to help them grow their audience and create content, suffered revenue losses after Bangara passed away in 2020.
According to the FY 2020-21 financial statement accessed by e4m, Qyuki suffered a total revenue loss of over Rs 5 crore. Its total revenue came down from Rs 76.23 crore in 2020 to Rs 70.52 crore in 2021.
Industry sources said that in the last one year, the company started cutting its operations across the country and shut its offices in Gurgaon and Bengaluru while giving a heads-up to the staff to look for better options.
Speaking to exchange4media, Abhimanyu Radhakrishnan, Managing Director, Qyuki, said, “During the course of FY23, it became clear that global sentiment was turning sharply and it was going to become difficult for VC-backed companies like ours to raise fresh capital on attractive terms for some of our ‘moonshot bets’ that weren't yet showing clear unit economics.
“We thus decided to shift our focus from growth to profitability and hence paused further investments in projects that would have longer monetization cycles such as Creator Commerce, Ed-tech & Web3. This has indeed resulted in size reduction of some teams, even though we continue to hire in our core business which has more than doubled over the two years of pandemic.”
Sources said that the company let go of certain positions but did not fire anyone. The company has 30% fewer employees since June 2022.
Some sources said that the company still has some staff working from home and that has shifted its Mumbai office from Bandra to a 10,000 square feet office in Andheri.
According to the financial statement of the company for FY 2020-21, Their advertisement and promotion expenses came down from Rs 4.80 crore in 2020 to Rs 2.46 crore in 2021. Their total income from services including information technology and advertising publicity reduced from Rs 72.73 crore in 2020 to Rs 66.55 crore in 2021.
A source close to the company said that in FY 2020-21, Qyuki’s funding was wiped out and factors like COVID-19 lockdown, ban on Tik-Tok, backing off by Chinese investors and passing away of its co-founder Samir Bangara were some of the reasons for it.
However, a source said that the company crossed Rs 100 crore revenue in 2022 and crossed USD 20 Million mark in 2023.
Sources said that the company was valued at 50 million USD in 2020 and the current valuation remained unknown.
Sagar Gokhale is a co-founder and presently the Chief Innovation Officer at Qyuki Digital Media. After Bangara, passed away in 2020 in a road accident, Abhimanyu Radhakrishnan, a former journalist, assumed the charge of the Managing Director.
Reportedly, Qyuki Digital Media held talks with strategic investors such as news aggregation platform Dailyhunt, one of their biggest customers, which did not work out.
As per reports, Qyuki, which lost its Chinese investors after the pandemic, also held talks with beauty and personal care conglomerate Good Glamm Group, ecommerce firms Meesho and Flipkart.
Sources close to the company said that it is in talks with several investors at the moment but it is not a desperate situation yet.
