MPL co-founder and CEO Sai Srinivas said in an email to the company’s employees on Monday, “We need to grow our core business while achieving EBITDA neutrality… and some of the consequences such as closing down non-working businesses have to obtain.”
Founded in 2018 by Srinivas and Shubham Malhotra, MPL offers around 70 games across categories like fantasy sports, quizzing, board games, esports and casual games daily on its Android and iOS apps. It boasts of over 90 million users across India, Indonesia, Europe, and the United States.
Srinivas noted that the return of the Indonesian business was several times lower than that of the company in India and the emerging US business, forcing it out of the market.
“It is time to make tough decisions and redeploy resources to other parts of the businesses,” Srinivas said.
With severance, MPL will allow affected employees with employee stock options (ESOPs) to retain their options for the next 10 years.
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The founder said in the letter that MPL has crossed an annual net revenue of $100 million and aims to reach $200-250 million in revenue by the end of FY23.
Touching on other key indicators, Srinivas said that net revenue for the company in the Indian market has grown by 25% in the last three months, and it is not spending marketing dollars on major events like the Indian Premier League (IPL).
“Breaking our dependence on IPL and achieving massive growth without spending a single penny on IPL frees us up, not to mention that we now have a huge arsenal of marketing capital that we need to continue to grow. May be posted in the second half of the year. here,” said Srinivas.
The founder also said that MPL has turned net-revenue positive within nine months of the commencement of its US business.
Interestingly, in February 2022 MPL acquired Berlin-headquartered games studio GameDuel to expand operations into European markets. This said, the move was in line with its strategy to expand its footprint in key global markets.
In September 2021, MPL raised new funds led by Dubai-based Legatum Capital at a valuation of $2.3 billion. Existing investors including Sequoia, SIG, RTP Global, Go-Ventures, Moor Strategic Ventures, Play Ventures, Base Partners, Telstra Ventures and Founders Circle Capital also participated in the round.
The startup was planning to use the funds to expand its global operations.
Startups in India continue to cut staff as they cut costs amid an unfavorable funding environment.
Frontero also said on Monday it had cut 145 full-time and contractual jobs, which make up about 30% of its workforce.
Earlier this month, edtech unicorn Vedantu laid off 424 full-time and contract workers to expand its runway. Two weeks before this, it had laid off 200 employees.
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