MPL lays off 100 employees

New Delhi: Online gaming platform Mobile Premier League (MPL) is laying off 100 employees and exiting the Indonesia market over poor growth.

The current business metrics "do not justify further investments into this unit", according to an internal email sent by MPL co-founders Sai Srinivas and Shubh Malhotra.

Founded in 2018, MPL hosts hundreds of millions of tournaments a month and is trusted by over 90 million registered users across India, Indonesia, Europe and the US.

"We have made the decision to wind down our Indonesia operations and shut down the streaming product on the MPL app. We have invested significant resources and capital over the last three years into our Indonesian operations," said the co-founders.

"However, the return profile of Indonesia is several multiples lower than what we were and are seeing in India, or even in our nascent US business," they added.

The laid off employees will be given severance and benefits.

"We are one of the few Internet companies which, within four years of inception, will cross $100 million of annual net revenue globally. On a gross revenue basis, we will be at $220-250 million in the year ending March 2023. In fact, we have a massively growing market ahead of us, but in order to capture it, we need to be willing to operate more efficiently today," the co-founders said in the internal email.

"The last few months have been insane. The philosophy of growth at all costs is now reversed. The market is now rewarding profitable growth over growth at all costs. It is imperative that we as a company respond to these changes and respond fast," they noted.

MPL will now double down on its efforts on more promising areas of its business. MPL is the world's leading mobile eSports platform that allows users to participate in paid competitions across 60+ games in multiple categories, including mobile games, daily fantasy sports, quizzing, and board games.