The company, which counts Sequoia Capital, Nu Ventures and North Base Media as its investors, has let go of 50 of its 200 full-time employees with immediate effect. The affected employees are from the company’s content, production and post-production teams.
Shrivastava told ET that the company will continue to engage some of the affected employees on a freelance basis for web series and film content creation while helping others with outplacements.
She also said that the company will help the impacted employees with financial support and ongoing health insurance coverage.
Also read: Layoffs in 2023: a list of Indian startups & tech companies that have cut jobs
“The creative team will be in-house, but the post-production, design, animation, VFX, music and casting will be outsourced,” she said.
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Pocket Aces operates digital channels such as FilterCopy, Dice Media, Gobble, Loco and Jambo on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.Speaking about the company’s new strategy, Shrivastava said Pocket Aces will continue to scale its long-form offerings via Dice Media even as it will go slow on creating content for its YouTube channels Nutshell and Gobble.
The company will instead step up its focus on creator-led short-form content for Instagram, which, she said, requires less manpower.
Shrivastava said the company will hit operating profit in 2023-24 due to cost savings accruing from the change in the operating model. “We are looking at a profit of Rs 5 crore next year (2023-24),” she said.
The company is expecting 20% revenue growth in 2022-23, according to Shrivastava. “We are looking at a revenue of Rs 110 crore in FY23, which is a 20% growth compared to the previous year,” she said.
The company hopes to give an exit to its existing investors once it reaches enough scale.
According to Crunchbase data, the company has raised $19.8 million across four funding rounds.
“We have not raised any capital in the last three years, and we don’t have big capital-raising plans. We will be working towards giving exits to our investors. We are still figuring out the path to exit for our investors,” said Shrivastava.