India's largest online food delivery company Swiggy has announced that it is letting go of 1100 employees across all grades, functions in the cities and at the head office over the next few days as the sector is jolted by the massive loss in business brought on by the COVID pandemic.
Swiggy CEO, Co-Founder, Sriharsha Majety wrote in a blog post addressed to his employees that the decision to trim the company's workforce is easily the hardest decision he had to take.
The Bengaluru-headquartered Swiggy also said that it will shut down its cloud-kitchen business (started two years ago) which may not even remain highly relevant for the next 18 months as the world adapts to a new normal in the post-COVID environment.
"Since the onset of COVID, we have already begun the process of shutting down our kitchen facilities temporarily or permanently, depending on their outlook and profitability profile. We are already operating at significantly lower levels on our staffing and physical infra than our earlier footprint, and will continue to optimise before we get more clarity on order volumes for food delivery," Majety said.
Swiggy was operating more than 1000 cloud kitchens across 14 cities for its restaurant partners with an investment of $24.5 million.
As the food delivery major works on its way to profitability, Swiggy said that cost optimisation including employee costs had become pivotal to survive the storm.
The Swiggy CEO said that 1100 employees who will be laid-off will be handed at least three months of salary irrespective of their period of tenure/notice period.
"For every year they have spent with us, we will be offering an extra month of ex-gratia in addition to their notice period pay, working out to between 3-8 months of salary depending on the tenure," he added.
Swiggy will also extend the ESOP benefit measures (by waiving off one-year ESOP cliff for those that have not completed one year and extend the benefits for the notice period) to the impacted workforce. The employees who have been fired will be contacted through one-on-one video calls, the Swiggy CEO added.