Sharan Hegde Lays Off 15% Of Workforce

Sharan Hegde, founder of The 1% has laid off 15 per cent of his workforce. “This is our first cost cutting exercise since inception. We have identified significant AI driven cost savings that can boost profitability and efficiency which can be reinvested in the business growth.” said Hegde in a LinkedIn post.

Hegde’s post on LinkedIn comes after a user on Reddit said that about 40 employees have been laid off. "They’ve terminated various VPs and AVPs, half of the video editors, all content creators and almost all the graphic designers," the anonymous Reddit user said. Talking about his decision to cut off the workforce, Hegde wrote, "Needless to say, when you grow at such lightning speed you are bound to make some mistakes with hiring and redundant expenses. Raghav Gupta (co-founder) and I have been running this company bootstrapped without ever using investor capital because we are super strict with our financial planning and diligence."

Hegde did his engineering from R.V.College Bengaluru, and is originally from Mangalore. He previously worked at KPMG and PwC before transitioning to a full-time content creator three years ago and bootstrapping The 1% two and a half years ago. Since then, the startup has seen investment from Nikhil Kamath and the like.