Finally, DealShare deserts B2B biz, fires over 100 employees

DealShare has shut down its B2B arm and laid off several employees as part of the social commerce startup’s efforts to shift focus on B2C offerings. The development comes weeks after the company CEO Vineet Rao stepped down from his position.

“We took some action in this direction by moving our operations to Gurugram and consolidating our business to focus on geographies of Jaipur, Delhi NCR, Lucknow and Kolkata with clear priorities on creating an online plus offline model,” a DealShare spokesperson told Entrackr in a statement.

The spokesperson further confirmed that the company has indeed shifted its focus on its B2C business for now as it aims to be “relevant to its consumers in the market.” The shift would mean realigning the company’s budgets, reorganising teams and locations etc, the statement added.

While the company did not comment on the number of layoffs, a Moneycontrol report said 130 employees were affected by the move.

In March, Entrackr reported that DealShare is exploring new business models and may go through a pivot. However, Rao denied any such developments then. Over the past few months, Dealshare has been going through structural change in business model and core team. The company’s board asked its co-founder and chief executive officer to step down from an active role and roped in a new chief executive to run the show.

According to Entrackr’s sources, Dealshare has failed to find a stable business model and most of its gross merchandise value (GMV) were from the B2B suite along with an insignificant contribution from the consumer-facing segment.

DealShare, which turned unicorn in January 2022, has raised $393 million to date and was valued at $1.7 billion during the last tranche in February 2022, and according to data tracking platform TheKredible.

Even as DealShare has not disclosed its FY23 numbers yet, the company recorded an over 8X jump in scale to Rs 1,933 crore in FY22. Its losses also rose 6.4X to Rs 431 crore during FY22. In March, Rao told Entrackr that the company is on track to conclude FY23 with around 20% growth in its topline to Rs 2,300 crore (excluding return and discounts).