Bounce to let go of 130 employees as Covid-19 impacts business

Scooter rental platform Bounce has announced to let go of 130 employees or 22% of its total workforce. This is the second instance in 2020 when the company has laid off as many employees due to impact on the business. 

Just before the first phase of the nationwide lockdown, Bounce had let go of around 120 employees, mostly from mid and senior-level with high pay packages, to cut costs and preserve capital. 

Entrackr had exclusively reported the news in March.

Announcing the development on the company’s blog, Vivekananda Hallekere, co-founder and CEO of Bounce said, “After much deliberation, Anil, Varun and, I along with the board and the core leadership team, made the incredibly difficult decision to let go of around 130 from our team, constituting approximately 22% of our total workforce.”

During Covid-19 lockdown, the Bengaluru-based firm had cut salaries across levels and the founders themselves took 100% pay cut to conserve the capital for a runway of at least 30 months.

“In the past 18 months, each of you played a key role in making self-driven shared mobility a reality, reaching new milestones, and growing together. You helped Bounce to grow from a few hundred rides per day to over 25 million rides in under 18 months in Bangalore alone,” added Hallekere.

The firm has also tried to compensate the losses by providing financial assistance to the impacted employees. The company has announced the severance of three months’ salary and ESOP will be awarded on a pro-rata basis for those who are beneficiary of the stock plan.

On the lines of Swiggy, Zomato and other firms who laid off staff during the lockdown period, Bounce will provide health insurance for impacted staff until December 2020. 

With social distancing and sanitization being top priority, most citizens are either staying indoors or avoiding using shared transport whenever they step out. Shared mobility startups have been heavily impacted due to the current pandemic. Internationally, Uber laid off around 3,000 employees last month.