Software firm Salesforce cuts 1,000 jobs despite a strong quarter
BENGALURU: Global enterprise software firm, Salesforce has announced layoffs which will impact 1,000 roles globally even as the company posted the strongest quarterly results of USD 5 billion on Tuesday. The California-based company said that it will retrench 1.9 per cent of the 54,000 workforce globally.
Although the software firm has a majority of its workforce based in the US, its employees in the Asia Pacific region including India will also be impacted as a result of the move, said a company spokesperson.
"We are reallocating resources to position the company for continued growth. This includes continuing to hire and redirecting some employees to fuel our strategic areas, and eliminating some positions that no longer map to our business priorities. For affected employees, we are helping them find the next step in their careers, whether within our company or a new opportunity," Salesforce India’s spokesperson told The New Indian Express in an emailed response.
Earlier in March this year, Salesforce appointed former SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya as the chief executive of its India division. The company had also announced to hire 3,000 in India, one of the fastest growing markets for its various cloud infrastructure services.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent work-from-home culture gaining ground, the demand for digital transformation has spiked, shooting up revenues of cloud service providers. Salesforce, on the back of its flagship customer relationship management (CRM) model being used by subscribers, reported an annual revenue of USD 19 billion.
Broken promise
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in a tweet in March, 2020 that the software giant will not conduct
any significant layoffs and will continue to pay its hourly workers even as offices remain closed.