A hobby-learning platform FrontRow has shut down. According to a report by TechCrunch, the community platform featuring Indian celebrities fired 90% of its employees in two phases. The company also recently asked its employees to look for jobs.
The Bengaluru-based startup which had been in operation for three years, aimed to create a vibrant community where renowned artists and athletes shared their expertise with consumers. TechCrunch received confirmation from Ishaan Preet Singh, one of the co-founders of FrontRow, regarding the latest developments. Singh revealed the startup is actively exploring discussions for acquiring intellectual property (IP) and considering the option of returning the unused capital to its investors.
Singh further mentioned that FrontRow scaled from $3 million to $4million annually but after that the company started facing issues with scaling. Soon, Singh realised the startup will eventually face a lot of scaling issues.
In an earlier note, to TechCrunch Singh said:<\/span>
FrontRow went back to being a seed company last year from Nov, with ~35 people on the team while we ran multiple experiments to find PMF in the non academic learning space. We ran 3 to 4 experiments including career oriented learning for adults and offline holistic development for kids. Some of them, particularly the kids offline piece is encouraging with a lot of user love, but still very early.<\/span>
We (founders and investors) had always set a June date for taking a step back and reflecting on the pilots we\u2019re running and while we\u2019ve made a ton of progress, and have a CM positive (albeit very small scale business), we\u2019re having multiple conversations on what\u2019s the best place for the company, including whether the market is large enough to support an independent player or whether this fits better within a larger multi category company. We\u2019ll be figuring this out over the next couple of months. We\u2019ve also kept the team in the loop here, and are helping some of them find alternate jobs if they\u2019d like. This isn\u2019t a capital or runway question (we have over 3 years of runway); it\u2019s more about making sure that when you raise capital with a vision of building a large scale business, you are honest on whether that\u2019s doable in a particular market as you learn more.<\/span><\/div>\n