Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce startup Udaan has laid off 5 percent of its workforce, or 180-200 employees.
The company has termed the layoff as “unusual” and called it an “efficiency enhancement exercise”.
Udaan said the layoffs have happened across various department functions. The company had an employee strength of around 4,000 before the layoffs.
The company added that the “efficiency enhancement exercise” has resulted in certain redundancies, with some roles no longer required.
The e-commerce major said, “Udaan has laid off about 160-180 employees as it looks to reinvent its business model and focus on the more profitable divisions. The company probably also took the decision owing to market conditions where businesses are struggling to generate profits by reducing their cash burn.”
“As the market evolves, we continue to tweak our already proven business model to make it stronger, more efficient, customer-centric and agile.” It said.
“In this direction, we have taken various steps to enhance efficiency, refine our cost structure and grow faster in our journey to achieve strong unit economics”, the company added.
The layoffs have happened at a time when the Bengaluru-based firm is trying to turn into a publicly listed entity in 18-24 months.
Founded in 2016 by three former executives of Flipkart -Vaibhav Gupta, Amod Malviya, and Sujeet Kumar with a vision to transform the trade ecosystem in the country by leveraging technology, udaan is India’s largest b2b eCommerce platform that is empowering small businesses through the power and scale offered by eCommerce.
It has operations across categories including lifestyle, electronics, home & kitchen, staples, fruits & vegetables, FMCG, pharma, toys, and general merchandise.
Earlier many companies like Unacademy, Cars24, Vedanta, Meesho, Trell, Furlenco, MPL, Front Row, and many others laid off more than 5,000 employees in India. Many other companies such as Netflix lays off 300 employees and Tesla laid off 10% Staff.
Also, Ola laid off about 2,100 employees in the January-March quarter this year, followed by Unacademy (over 600), Cars24 (600), and Vedantu (400). The commerce firm Meesho laid off 150 employees, and Furlenco 200.
