Massive layoffs at Udaan! Company fires 180 employees to cut costs

New Delhi: Udaan, a business-to-business (B2B) marketplace with headquarters in Bengaluru, has laid off 180 to 200 staff members, or around 4-5 percent of its total workforce. There are about 4,000 people working for the company. The layoff is part of an attempt to increase efficiency.

"We keep modifying our tried-and-true business model to make it stronger, more effective, customer-centric, and nimble as the market changes. In order to achieve good unit economics, we have taken a number of actions in this regard to increase efficiency, improve our cost structure, and accelerate growth "The company declared in a statement.

The company claimed that the "efficiency enhancement exercise" had led to certain redundancies and the elimination of some functions.

The layoffs occur just as the company announced ambitions to launch an IPO within 18 to 24 months.

When DST Global and Lightspeed Venture Partners contributed $225 million to the company's Series C fundraising round, it achieved unicorn status in 2018. According to regulatory filings, the Bengaluru-based business recently raised $250 million (or roughly 1,875 crore) through convertible notes and debt.

Prior to that, the company raised $280 million in January of last year from current investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, DST Global, GGV Capital, Altimeter Capital, and Tencent, as well as investors from the US-based technology investment firm Octahedron Capital and Moonstone Capital.

Former Flipkart employees Amod Malviya, Sujeet Kumar, and Vaibhav Gupta started Udaan in 2016. It unites wholesalers, retailers, manufacturers, and traders on a single platform and gives them access to a variety of clients, suppliers, and products. In order to get the best offer, the site also enables dealers to communicate directly with one another.

This is hardly the first time that startups have fired staff, though. Numerous businesses from various industries have fired staff in recent months in an effort to save money. Earlier,

Vedantu announced plans to retrench 424 of its employees, and other firms followed suit. Sorting Hat Technologies Pvt. Ltd. 's Unacademy had let go of roughly 800 workers.