General Catalyst-backed CityMall fires over 15% of its workforce

Grocery-focused social commerce startup CityMall has joined the league of over a dozen startups shedding employees in a bid to cut costs and extend the runway. The Gurugram-based firm has laid-off over 190 employees, according to the company’s LinkedIn post.

“The layoffs have been on for the past several weeks,” said one of the sources requesting anonymity. “The impacted employees constitute over 15% of total strength and are from marketing, sales, human resource and engineering functions.”

According to sources, CityMall has 1,100-1,200 employees including off-role staff whereas its LinkedIn page shows that it has a total headcount of over 800.

Entrackr got to know about the layoffs at CityMall in the last week of May but the company’s co-founder and chief executive Angad Kikla denied the development back then.

Layoffs have become the new normal across venture-funded startups in India after two years of the talent war. CityMall’s cuts come within four months of its $75 million Series C round. A clutch of well-funded startups including Cars24, Rupeek, mFine, Meesho, Unacademy and Vedantu have collectively laid-off several thousand employees over the past few months.

According to Fintrackr’s data, CityMall has raised close to $115 million to date from investors including Jungle Venture, Elevation Capital, AM Holding, General Catalysts, Waterbridge Ventures and Accel and was valued at about $320 million during its Series C round.

CityMall deals in lifestyle, grocery and other categories through a network of community resellers in tier II and III cities.

While the company is yet to disclose its annual financial numbers for FY22, it made Rs 14.95 crore in FY21 with a loss of Rs 10.4 crore during the FY21, according to the company’s annual financial report with RoC.