India’s largest b2b eCommerce platform, Udaan has announced the second round of layoffs due to macroeconomic conditions.
About 10% of the company’s 3000-permanent workforce will be impacted by the layoff. These layoffs will affect nearly 1,000 employees.
However, the employees that are fired 300-350 were on the company payroll while the remaining are likely to be on the contract.
An Udaan spokesperson said, “As Udaan moves forward in its journey to becoming a profitable company, the efficiency enhancement drive and the evolution in the business model have created some redundancies in the system, with some roles no longer required.”
“As a responsible organization, we are working towards providing all required support to the impacted employees. We believe in efficiency as a driver of profitable growth and will continue to refine our cost structures and models”, the spokesperson added.
“In this direction, we have taken numerous steps, with enhanced digital capabilities, to achieve efficiency and scale, become more agile, and remain competitive in the marketplace“, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson further said, “These initiatives, executed by our strong leadership team, have not only helped us achieve positive unit economics but also reduced inefficiency in the system, with huge cost benefits, which is key to building a sustainable business.”
As announced by Udaan CFO Aditya Pande to employees in an internal memo, The development comes soon after the company raised $120 million through convertible notes from existing shareholders and bondholders.
Udaan earlier laid off 180 employees in June 2022. Earlier, Ed-tech startups Unacademy, Vedantu, FrontRow, Lido, and Frontrow among others have cumulatively retrenched thousands of employees this year.
On the other hand, IT majors, like Intel Corporation, Snap, Microsoft, Twitter, TikTok, and Google have either laid off employees or frozen new hiring.
IT companies are already seeing margin pressure due to inflation and impending recession in markets like the US and Europe, the biggest markets for the sector.
The development of either layoff or hiring slowdown comes after IT companies, crypto exchanges, and financial firms cut out jobs and slow down the hiring process due to slow global economic growth caused by higher interest rates, and rising inflation.
