ClassPass CEO Fritz Lanman. Photo by Diarmuid Greene/Collision via Sportsfile, under Creative Commons license

Fitness startup ClassPass will lay off or furlough slightly more than half of its staff amid a business slowdown stemming from the coronavirus outbreak, as confirmed by the company to CNBC. The job cuts will affect 53% of ClassPass’s employees, consisting of 22% being outrightly laid off and 31% being furloughed. The job cuts come amid hard times for ClassPass, which confirmed to CNBC that its revenue has plunged by 95% in the middle of lockdowns and movement restrictions stemming from the coronavirus outbreak.

ClassPass’s business centers on selling subscriptions to gyms and fitness studios and with currently instituted lockdowns across the U.S., gyms and fitness studios have temporarily closed in droves, meaning much lesser revenue for ClassPass. ClassPass has tried to compensate by offering subscriptions for live fitness sessions but still, that can’t fully make up to the scale of in-person fitness sessions that accounts for most of the company’s business.

Laying off or furloughing more than half of a company’s headcount is surely not a situation that looks good in any form but one that may be warranted in hard times like ClassPass is currently facing. A 95% revenue decrease can be catastrophic for any business regardless of its size. But to note, ClassPass is fresh off $285 million in Series E funding that could help it scale through current tough times. As of a recent count, the New York-based company had more than 650 employees so that would mean at least 140 employees being laid off and at least 200 being furloughed as part of the instituted job cuts. The tech industry at large has been hit hard, so much that this is not even the first or second or third set of job cuts involving hundreds of people. Not long ago, travel startup TripActions cut more than 300 jobs. Small business lender Kabbage also furloughed the majority of its employees reportedly for a month. Scooter sharing startup Bird is also fresh off job cuts that affected more than 400 persons. To top it all, all the layoffs seem to have followed a similar pattern; delivered by video conference calls, a not too nice way for a person to find out he or she is affected by job cuts.

Amidst the coronavirus outbreak, ClassPass has put in place a relief fund for its studio partners and says it’ll match up to $1 million in user donations. The company has also offered its own collection of pre-recorded fitness classes for free to its users. Altogether, ClassPass has more than 30,000 fitness studios on its network.

Founded in 2013, ClassPass has grown to become a company privately valued at more than $1 billion by investors and with over half a billion in funding.