Udaan, the leading B2B e-commerce start-up platform for businesses and shop-owners, has laid off 180-200 employees, which is 5 per cent of its workforce.
As per media reports, the company termed the lay off as unusual.
The layoffs come on the back of Chief Executive Vaibhav Gupta telling his staff in an internal note that the company had hit a positive contribution margin in the last quarter of fiscal 2021 and was on track to become unit economics positive in the ongoing quarter ending 30 June.
Leading business daily The Economic Times reported that a company spokesperson confirmed the development without disclosing the number of employees it fired.
Cutting people cost is also part of the journey to be more prudent economically.
7-year-old Udaan is in the business of selling groceries, apparel and other goods to local mom-and-pop stores across the country. Founded by former Flipkart executives Sujeet Kumar, Vaibhav Gupta and Amod Malviya, it was the fastest company to achieve unicorn status as of 2019.
The company said in a statement, “As the market evolves, we continue to tweak our already proven business model to make it stronger, more efficient, customer-centric and agile. In this direction, we have taken various steps to enhance efficiency, refine our cost structure and grow faster in our journey to achieve strong unit economics.” The ‘efficiency enhancement exercise’ has resulted in certain redundancies, with some roles no longer required, it added.
