Furlenco, the furniture rental startup has reportedly laid off between 180-200 employees involved in customer grievance redressal, scheduling, and other similar customer support functions.
According to media reports, these layoffs come amidst an attempt to scale down operations, with operations in metro and non-metro cities like Ahmedabad, Kolkata, and Pune to be reduced soon.
The company has also outsourced functions such as asset management and collections to third parties.
Furlenco has also confirmed the development. After the retrenchment, the company currently has 350 employees. According to Furlenco, it has only temporarily suspended its operations in Kolkata, Mysuru, Chandigarh, and Jaipur as it aims for a leasing model for its warehouses to save costs
“The company has suspended operations across Kolkata, and other cities…these were places it was looking to aggressively scale earlier…They have laid off close to 200-220 employees this year.,” a source aware of the developments told the publication.
“What is surprising is that the company was ramping up its hiring last year and then suddenly decided to retrench employees…This has caused uncertainty in the company. The current employees were informed of the layoffs in a town hall by the top management,” another source told the publication on condition of anonymity.
“The decision is a part of a larger cost restructuring exercise to focus on creating an asset-light model. We hired close to 200 people last year, with almost 150 of them being across customer engagement functions. Another 35 members were added to technology functions. These hirings were made to cater towards increased customer demand,” Ajith Karimpana, founder and chief executive officer of Furlenco said.
“With technology automating most of the customer-facing functions now, we had to let go of these employees, since their roles had become redundant,” Karimpana added.
Founded in 2012, Furlenco has raised money from the likes of UAE-based CE Ventures, Zinnia Global Fund, Lightbox and Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan.
