May 27, 2016: Snapdeal plans to scale down operations in its regional offices including Bangalore, Mumbai, Calcutta and Hyderabad, according to multiple people within the company.
Snapdeal to shut down a few offices in the next six months, if it doesn’t raise a fresh funding round. The Delhi-based company launched a performance improvement plan for certain employees in February.
“The accounts and vendor management teams in Bangalore have already been cut to about 45 people from 85 people a year ago,” said one of the people quoted above. “The focus has moved to the ads business,” the person said.
Category managers, account management executives and seller onboarding team managers who spoke to ET on condition of anonymity said few employees have been asked to relocate to Snapdeal’s head office in Delhi , prompting them to resign.
“In some cases (employees) have even been given severance packages for two months,” said one senior executive directly involved in the retrenchment plans.
Backed by Japan’s SoftBank , Snapdeal is engaged in a battle with two major competitors– Flipkart and Amazon– for market share in India’s competitive online retail market.
According to Shreedhar Prasad, Partner – Management Consulting, KPMG , “E-commerce players are still trying to figure out the right metric to hire. Since it is a relatively new concept, they are still learning the art, which is adding to their profitability concern.”
Also Read: Snapdeal Chief Product Officer Anand Chandrasekaran Exits
