FrontRow Shuts Operations, To Decide On Returning Investors' Money

The celebrity-led learning platform FrontRow has shut down operations, about nine months after firing 75% of its workforce.

Co-founder Ishaan Preet Singh confirmed the development in a statement to BQ Prime on Monday and said the startup shut down daily operations formally on June 30.

The company is exploring potential acquisitions of the platform and its team but is also deciding whether it makes "more sense to return the capital", he said. "We will decide that with the board in the next couple of months."

After the layoffs last October, FrontRow went back to being a seed company with about 35 people on the team, he said. "We ran multiple experiments to find product market fit in the non-academic learning space," he said. "We ran three-to-four experiments, including career-oriented learning for adults and offline holistic development for kids."

The startup had raised about $17.2 million, or Rs 130 crore, and had investors like Elevation Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Cred's Kunal Shah, Unacademy's Gaurav Munjal, and ShareChat's Farid Ahsan.

According to Singh, his team and the company's investors had "always set a June date for taking a step back and reflecting on the pilots".

"While we've made a tonne of progress and have a positive contribution margin positive, but a very small-scale business, we're having multiple conversations on what's 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," he said.

Singh highlighted that this isn't a capital or runway money question. "We have over three years of runway," he said. "It's more about making sure that when you raise capital with a vision of building a large-scale business, you are honest on whether that's doable in a particular market as you learn more."