Pocket Aces fires 20% of its workforce

Digital entertainment company Pocket Aces has fired 50 employees, close to 20% of its total workforce. The affected employees are said to be from the company’s content, post-production and production teams. 

“As we continue to march towards our vision of becoming culture creators that positively influence people via our content and products, we had to take some difficult but necessary steps to keep our operating model agile and resilient,” said Aditi Srivastava, Co-Founder and CEO of Pocket Aces in a LinkedIn post. 

She further said, “On long-form content, we are innovating our operating model to depend much more on freelance resources. Keeping in line with how audience preferences are moving, on short-form content we are focusing much on a creator-led Instagram-first model.” 

“These operating model changes mean that we have had to move 20% of our team out of full-time roles. We care deeply about these talented folks, and will ensure that we provide them with financial support, and ongoing health insurance coverage and help them with their transition. We will also continue to work with many of them in a freelance model and help them with outplacements,” said Srivastava. 

The company had recently raised funding from Sequoia India, DSP Group, and 3one4 Capital. It was founded by Aditi Srivastava, Ashwin Suresh and Anirudh Pandita in 2013.