Unacademy, an edtech firm, has cut off about 1,000 employees in the last several weeks, including on-roll and contract workers, according to persons familiar with the situation.

This comprises employees of Prepladder, a subsidiary of the Unacademy company, which it bought in 2020. Unacademy, PrepLadder, CodeChef, Graphy, and Relevel make up the collective.

Last week, the Bengaluru-based company requested about 600 employees to leave in order to slash costs in the face of an imminent slowdown in venture capital investment and a tightening of the general economic situation.

Unacademy was valued at $3.4 billion when it secured $440 million in August of last year, led by Singapore’s Temasek.