E-commerce firm Snapdeal is reportedly on a layoff spree across its business verticals — logistics, digital payments and e-commerce. The company has apparently initiated the process of laying off about 600 people, even as its recent acquisition FreeCharge's CEO Govind Rajan has quit.
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The admission, so to speak, came in a statement from Snapdeal, which counts SoftBank, eBay, Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Alibaba, BlackRock and Temasek as its investors. The portal is owned by Jasper Infotech Private Ltd. and has about 8,000 employees.
"On our journey towards becoming India's first profitable e-commerce company in two years, it is important that we continue to drive efficiency across all parts of our business, which enables us to pass on the value to our consumers and sellers. We have realigned our resources and teams to further these goals and drive high-quality business growth," the CNBC-TV18 quoted a Snapdeal spokesperson as saying.
Govind Rajan put in his papers on Tuesday and the management has accepted it, according to a report in the Economic Times.
Snapdeal's acquisitions include digital payments business FreeCharge, Shopo, eSportsBuy, Grabbon, Doozton, Smartprix, Exclusively.in, UniCommerce, RupeePower, LetsGoMo, Fashiate and Reduce Data, according to Tracxn, a portal that tracks start-ups.
Its rivals are Amazon and Flipkart, apart from other smaller players.
Snapdeal was co-founded by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.
In a recent interview to Reuters, Bahl had said that he hopes SoftBank-backed Snapdeal will turn profitable in two years. Snapdeal was valued at $6.5 billion last year. Jasper reported net loss of Rs 1,319 crore on total sales of Rs 2,960 crore in 2015-16.
