Tickertape has laid off around 30% of its workforce even as the company may fold up into Smallcase, which is its largest investor, two sources in the know told ETtech.

Market research platform Tickertape was founded in 2015, and incubated within Smallcase, a management firm. In 2021, it was hived off as a separate entity. Smallcase had invested $5 million into the Bengaluru-based company.

Tickertape’s founder Ujjwal Ankur took to Twitter to confirm the development.
The company did not respond to a detailed emailed query sent by ETtech on Thursday morning.

“We at Tickertape had to let go 29 of our colleagues as part of a restructuring exercise,” wrote Ankur on Twitter. The company had around 96 employees on its roll.

Tickertape provides market research tools such as stocks and mutual fund tracking. It collates data, information and content for Indian stocks, mutual funds, indices and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Smallcase had incubated Tickertape with the intent of building a full-stack market research company, which would help users make decisions regarding their investments.

One of the sources told ETtech that the initial plan was to build Tickertape as a separate entity, and raise equity money from external investors. However that did not work out, he added.

“In the last two years of operating independently, we have grown in size and seen many successes. However, today’s decision is an unfortunate but necessary step as we chart out a path to become financially sustainable,” said Ankur in a series of tweets.

The retrenchment exercise was in line to make the platform ‘financially sustainable’, Ankur added.

This comes at a time when there is a slowdown in the larger tech-enabled stock broking space. Smallcase itself has been looking to raise a fresh equity round after acquisition talks with credit card payment startup Cred fell through.

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