Bright Money lays off 100 workforce

Sequoia-funded fintech startup Bright Money has laid off close to 100 people, which is about 50% of its workforce, adding that the organization needs to restructure due to market circumstances. The termination provided one month of severance pay.

One of the employees said that the staff across product, tech and marketing were impacted. Many were too early in their careers and employees had been assured that the company was doing well, but the sudden development has just shaken everyone.

Bright Money was regulated to offer all forms of financial products such as checking account, savings account, credit and investment products to the US customers. Last month, Avi Patchava, Co-founder and CEO of Bright Money claimed that the two-and-a-half-year-old company had been doing extremely well, with $12 million in annual revenues.

He had said that currently, the company has two revenue lines – one was people paying $10 subscription a month for using the app and availing several services, and the second is credit. “Bright is probably the only company running the entire credit business out of India and having the India set up gives them a huge cost advantage over any neobank in the US,” he added.

Recently, multiple startups across sectors have laid off employees including Vedantu, Lido Learning and Meesho. Vedantu laid off 424 of its employees, while Unacademy fired nearly 800 employees, with Lido Learning asking over 1,200 of its employees to resign. Social commerce startup Meesho laid off 150 employees. OkCredit also laid off around 40 employees.

So far in 2022, startups have laid off over 8,000 employees and reportedly may lay off another 5,000 employees over the next few quarters due to the rising pressure from investors to improve profitability and to increase focus on their core businesses.