ShopClues, an e-commerce startup, headquartered in Gurugram, has, reportedly, displaced around 150-200 of its employees across departments, cited Inc42.
While, a spokesperson of the ShopClues said that the company has been reducing its workforce for the past two years and using automation and technology to fill those gaps. The majority of the layoffs are said to be in the operations team.
“Our customer NPS has been increasing steadily in these two years while our workforce has dropped by 50% in the same time period. Our focus has been profitability and this year we plan to achieve that,” the spokesperson added.
ShopClues was founded by Sandeep Aggarwal in 2011. Headquartered in Gurugram, it is an online marketplace owned by Clues Network Pvt.
The company has raised over $1 billion in funding from investors such as Tiger Global, Nexus Venture Partners, GIC, and more.
In November 2018, ShopClues had reported a total income of $37.7 Mn (INR 273.3 Cr), an increase of 46% from $25.81 Mn (INR 187.1 Cr) in the previous year. It also narrowed its net loss by 40% to $28.17 Mn (INR 208.14 Cr) for FY 2017-18. Though clearly that was not enough.
“We have ensured that impacted employees, if any, are out placed proactively. We hold this to core of our culture. We have provided 100% placement assistance to all impacted employees,” the spokesperson added.
On of the core reason behind the laying off the employees is the steadily lost momentum, with the orders dropping to less than 30,000 per day. In a high cash burn business such as ecommerce, ShopClues was losing money every month.
Some of the similar e-commerce unicorns includes Flipkart, Amazon, Alibaba, Paytm Mall, Snapdeal, Myntra and many more.