ShareChat lays off 25% of its workforce

ShareChat has laid off about 101 employees or 25% of its workforce due to the ongoing covid19 pandemic and local market uncertainties. According to an email sent to employees by Ankush Sachdeva, CEO of ShareChat, the advertisement market would remain unpredictable this year and the firm is streamlining its revenue teams to these new expectations.

“We have to focus on our core product and feed recommendation is driven growth levers while scaling back on the others. We need to go back to our fundamentals in terms of only picking bets that move the needle for growth,” said Sachdeva in the email. 

The impacted employees will have the option of taking a garden leave of two months or half the salary for four months. Additionally, they will get one month's ex-gratia for every year that they have worked for the company.

The development was first reported by ET.

ShareChat will also continue to provide health insurance policy until the end of the year. For ESOP holders, the company will extend the timeline for the stocks employees own till the end of the year. 

It’s worth noting that ShareChat had started monetizing its platform in late last year. The Twitter-backed vernacular social media platform had also launched a fantasy sports gaming platform Jeet11 and acquired Elanic to foray into social commerce.

One of the top-funded startups in this space, ShareChat has been questioned over its business model. For context, the company had posted zero operational revenue in FY19 alongside a loss of Rs 414 crore.  

ShareChat joins the list of many companies that laid-off employees due to disruption in business. Food-tech majors Swiggy and Zomato collectively cut over 1600 jobs while travel and hospitality firms such as Treebo, Fab, MakeMyTrip, TravelTriangle fired a significant chunk of their workforce. Livspace recently fired 15% of its total headcount. Experts believe that many companies will announce cost-cutting majors like layoff and pay cut in the coming weeks when the fourth phase of lockdown gets over.