Sachin Bansal’s insurance firm lays off 40 staff; to shift headquarters

Within five months of acquiring DHFL General Insurance brand CoCo, Sachin Bansal has reportedly let go of over 40 employees or one-fifth of its total workforce. 

The impacted employees also include the CEO and other senior and mid-management executives of the company. Vijay Sinha was leading CoCo in the capacity of CEO and managing director (MD). Even prior to the acquisition by Navi, he had been with the company for over three-and-a-half-years.

Bansal had acquired DHFL from Wadhawan Global Capital (WGC) for around Rs 100 crore in January. At that time, the company had Rs 400 crore under its assets management. After the acquisition, Bansal placed the existing brand CoCo under Navi General Insurance.

According to an Indian Express report, Bansal also hinted that the company would prefer promotions within the organization rather than to go for external hiring.

“This was important to do at this juncture because we are thinking of new strategies for CoCo. We had to do people rationalization activity because not everybody was fitting into the future strategy that we are thinking of,” said Bansal while addressing the employees via webinar. 

Apart from sacking 20% of staff, CoCo also announced to shift its base from Mumbai to Bengaluru by the end of this calendar year. While some employees opposed the decision of shifting the headquarters, Bansal emphasized that the decision is in line with Navi’s future strategy.

Entrackr’s has sent queries to CoCo and Bansal. We will update the post as and when they respond. 

Changing base for CoCo makes sense as Navi is based out of Bengaluru and it would help the mother company and Bansal to monitor them effectively. This would be another instance when a company has decided to shift its headquarters to tech hub Bengaluru. A few weeks ago, Paytm Mall shifted its base to Bengaluru from Noida.