B2B e-commerce platform Udaan lays off 180 employees

B2B e-commerce major Udaan has joined the ranks of many late and growth-stage startups which resorted to layoffs in a bid to cust costs and extend the runway. The Bengaluru-based unicorn has laid off close to 180 employees in the past few weeks, said three people aware of the details of the exercise.

“Udaan has laid off 160-180 employees from sales, marketing and operations,” said one of the sources requesting anonymity. “The exact numbers could go beyond 300 as well.”

Udaan confirmed the layoff to Entrackr without disclosing the exact numbers.

“...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. However, the efficiency enhancement exercise has also resulted in certain redundancies in the system, with some roles no longer required…,” the company said in a statement.

According to sources, Udaan has decided to go for layoff after weighing external market conditions and tough funding conditions. “The company may give a pink slip to more employees,” said the above-mentioned source.

Udaan has denied any restructuring plan further and said: “As part of the long-term plans of the organisation, we continue to hire talent for the new roles that have been created to grow the business faster.”

Udaan is one of the top-funded companies among Indian startups in the past few years. According to Fintrackr, it has raised around $1.3 billion and was valued at $3 billion as of January 2021. The company was recently in the news for raising $250 million via convertible notes and debt which also saw the participation of Microsoft.

While the Lightspeed-backed company is yet to file its annual financial statements for FY22, its operating revenue shot up 6X to Rs 5,919 crore in FY21 from only Rs 978 crore in FY20. The company managed to reduce its annual losses by 1.4% to Rs 2,482.3 crore in FY21.

In the ongoing calendar year, Indian startups have collectively laid off more than 10,000 employees. This includes well-funded startups including Cars24, Rupeek, mFine, Meesho, Unacademy, Vedantu, CityMall and Ola. A couple of startups namely Lido and Udayy also shut their operations down due to tough funding conditions.