With no signs of thaw in the funding winter and startups focusing more on profitability rather than growth, layoffs in the space continues. However, the pace seems to have slowed if the first one-and-a-half month of the current year is taken as an indicator.

So far, about seven companies have laid off about 1,800 employees, as per data from layoffs.fyi, which is a sharp drop from the 4,000 people that got laid off during a similar period last year by 29 companies.

Analysts said that this maybe because several firms have rightsized themselves to an extent so the scope for big layoffs may have reduced to an extent.

Of the 1,846 employees laid off this year, Flipkart accounts for the bulk 1,100. The company said that this was a result of a performance-based appraisal cycle, so not much should be read into it.

Besides Flipkart, IPO-bound Swiggy cut 400 jobs, which is around the same it did during a similar  period last year. The company is trying to improve its bottomline while getting ready for the public markets. In FY23, its losses had widened to Rs 4,179 crore from Rs 3,629 crore in the year before that, even as revenue rose 45% to Rs 8,264.6 crore.

Mobile marketing platform InMobi, fitness startup CureFit, active wear brand BlissClub and online meat delivery platform Licious also fired employees in the last one-and-a-half months. Besides this, neobanking startup Muvin also reportedly laid off its employees after shutting down its operations earlier this month. As per Tracxn, Muvin had 14 employees.

During a similar period last year, the sector had seen massive layoffs from Byju’s — which had fired 1,500 employees –, ShareChat, Ola, Dunzo, MediBuddy, Dealshare and CoinDCX.

Globally, too, the layoff trend seems to be in the slow lane, with 144 startups having laid off approximately 34,500 employees, which is much lower when compared to the similar period last year. January, 2023, had seen the worst of the layoffs – 277 startups had laid off 90,000 employees. Another 40,000 got sacked in February.

Some of the global startups that have carried large-scale layoff this year are fintech firms Block and PayPal, solar design software startup Aurora Solar, Riot Games, Twitch and language learning app Duolingo, as per media reports.