India’s VerSe Innovation — the $5 billion Indian startup behind news aggregator Dailyhunt, short-video platform Josh and hyperlocal video app PublicVibe — has cut 150 employees, or 5% of its workforce of 3,000, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed.
The Bengaluru-based startup informed impacted employees on Friday and separately held a town hall meeting on Monday where it announced pay cuts to its remaining staff, people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
It’s a major turn for VerSe Innovation, which is backed by the likes of Google and Microsoft and raised more than $800 million in fresh funding as recently as April of this year. The change speaks to just how much the bottom has fallen out from under the advertising market, how that’s impacting high-profile consumer businesses reliant on it and how that’s stretching to even some of the …
