Indian food delivery company Swiggy to cut 380 jobs • businessroundups.org

Swiggy plans to lay off 380 jobs and close its meat marketplace as the Prosus Venture and SoftBank-backed Indian food delivery giant tries to navigate the market downturn that has forced companies to become leaner and more disciplined.

In an email to employees on Friday, Swiggy co-founder and CEO Sriharsha Majety said the startup has advanced its plans for profitability and needs to make tough decisions to save money. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, which was valued at $10.7 billion in a funding round last January, employs about 6,000 people.

“Over the past year, we have also identified many areas for improvement in our pace of execution. Due to the iterative structure of the different organizations, some extra layers have been created in pockets. This definitely increased our communication overhead and compromised our agility. This meant that instead of doing more with less, in these cases we were doing less with more,” he wrote in an email, seen by businessroundups.org.

Majety said the startup plans to close the meat market “very soon” as well.

“While we remain fully committed to exploring new business opportunities, we have also been reviewing some of our existing new verticals. As of very soon we will close our meat marketplace. While the team has done exceptionally well with solid input, despite our iterations here, we haven’t made it to the product market. From a customer perspective, we will continue to offer meat delivery through Instamart. We will continue to invest in all other new industries.”

Affected employees will receive severance pay of three to six months and additional days based on each year of service at startup, Majety said in the email. Swiggy will also accelerate their final abyss and provide medical insurance for them and their dependents until May this year.

The job cuts, which were in full swing last year, have continued into 2023. Dozens of startups including Ola, Byju’s, Unacademy, Cashfree, CoinDCX, Dunzo and ShareChat have laid off staff in recent months. According to industry estimates, more than 20,000 people in India’s start-up workforce have lost their jobs since the market’s downturn.

(More to follow)