Harsh Jain, Co-founder and CEO of Dream11, one of India’s rare profitable unicorns, has made a clarion call for US-based Indian techies to return home amidst mass layoffs at leading companies in the Silicon Valley.
“With all the 2022 tech layoffs in the US, please spread the word to remind Indians to come back home (especially those with visa issues) to help Indian Tech realize our hyper-growth potential in the next decade,” Jain wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday.
Crunchbase estimates suggest that over 52,000 techies have been laid off by US companies in 2022 so far, in what has been an economic bloodbath in the country. Mass firings have happened at Twitter, Stripe, Salesforce, Lyft, Spotify, Peloton, Netflix, Robinhood, Instacart, Udacity, Booking.com, Zillow, Loom, Beyond Meat, and several others.
What caused the funding crunch and resulting layoffs?
Crunchbase explained, “The public markets have been hit hard in 2022, and that’s trickled down to the private markets. Inflation concerns, rising interest rates, and geopolitical issues have all contributed to a roller-coaster stock market. Start-ups — especially those that benefited from a pandemic boom that’s starting to cool — are feeling the pressure too. Valuations, particularly at the late stage, have started to dip, and start-ups say it’s much more difficult to raise new funding in this environment.”
Even though several Indian start-ups, especially in edtech, have had to resort to mass layoffs this year, Mumbai-based Dream Sports Group, currently valued at $8 billion, continues to be profitable, with a cumulative user base of over 150 million across its group companies. These include Dream11, Rario, FanCode, DreamPay, DreamSetGo, and more.
Dream11 launched on the Google Play Store on October 9 after Google allowed the official listing of real-money gaming apps. By November 2, it climbed to the top of the gaming charts on the Play Store.
Jain added in his post, “We have 10 kickass portfolio companies in Fantasy Sports, NFTs, Sports OTT, FinTech, Sports Experiences etc that are constantly looking for great talent, especially with leadership experience in Design, Product & Tech. If you or someone you know fits the above, feel free to reach out to us.”
He also shared an email id ([email protected]) for laid off Indian techies in the US to reach out to.
