BENGALURU: Business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce start-up Udaan, which recently raised $120 million in convertible notes and debt, has fired about 350 on-roll employees. This is the second round of layoffs, as the start-up previously fired about 200 employees.
Udaan confirmed the layoffs and said, “Over the last few years, we have taken various steps towards building udaan as a world-class institution that will last beyond our lifetime. We believe in efficiency as a driver of profitable growth and will continue to refine our cost structures and models.”
The company’s 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.”
“As we move forward in our journey towards making Udaan a profitable company, the efficiency enhancement drive and the evolution in business model has created some redundancies in the system, with some roles no longer required.”
The start-up, which is backed by Tencent and Lightspeed Ventures, is eyeing to go public in 12-18 months. Founded in 2016, Udaan has operations across categories including lifestyle, electronics, home & kitchen, staples, fruits and vegetables, FMCG, pharma, toys and general merchandise. Apart from on-roll employees, it has many contract workers.
These layoffs come at a time when start-ups are bracing for a long funding winter. Unacademy founder Gaurav Munjal tweeted that winter will get worse. “Get to profitability asap. And then grow from there. Stop all unnecessary spends. Focus on building great Products and organic Traction Channels,” he said.