New Delhi: Non-academic learning and community platform Frontero, backed by celebrities like Deepika Padukone and rapper Raftaar, has shut down, media reports said on Monday.
Frontero co-founder Ishan Preet Singh confirmed to TechCrunch that the startup is shutting down and is “exploring IP acquisition talks and returning unused capital to investors”.
The startup had raised about $18 million with backing from Elevation Capital, Eight Roads Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Not Boring Capital, among others.
In August 2021, Raftaar invested an undisclosed amount in Frontero App after the app raised $3.2 million in seed funding from Padukone, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Elevation Capital (formerly SAIF Partners).
The non-academic skill development platform was founded in 2020 by serial entrepreneurs Mikhil Raj, Shubhadit Sharma and Singh. The app had formed creative alliances with celebrities like Neha Kakkar, Divine, Suresh Raina, Amit Trivedi, Biswa Kalyan Rath, Yuzvendra Chahal, Bhubaneswar. Kumar, Raju Srivastava, Sunburn, Mortal and 8bit Thug.
The startup had laid off 75 per cent of its workforce, around 130 employees, in October last year.
In May 2022, Frontero laid off 30 percent of its employees due to lack of funds and a downturn in the market.
Co-founder Singh called the layoffs a “difficult prioritization decision taken to achieve goals over the next decades”.
He had said, “While we have more than 24 months to iterate and improve our core business, we have had to make some difficult priority decisions over the last few weeks.”
Frontero provided courses such as singing, music composition, cricket, photography and film making from influential people in these fields.