Layoffs at big techs 'Obnoxious and Perverse', Indian startups won’t follow global suit: PhonePe CEO

Digital payments provider PhonePe’s co-founder and CEO Sameer Nigam has termed layoffs at big techs — Google, Amazon, Microsoft as "Obnoxious" and "Perverse", adding, "they are conducting record layoffs when they are clocking record profits".

So far in 2023, 522 tech companies have laid off 153,208 employees, as per the latest available data from layoffs.fyi, a real-time layoff tracking platform. The majority of workforce reductions have been driven by the likes of Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and Zoom.

Startups, too, have announced cuts across all sectors. In India alone, over 23,000 employees have been laid off by more than 80 startups, including unicorns BYJU’S, Chargebee, Cars24, LEAD, Ola, OYO, Meesho, MPL, LivSpace Innovaccer, Udaan, Unacademy and Vedantu. Edtech has seen the most layoffs, followed by consumer services and ecommerce.

However, Nigam is positive that the Indian startup founders will not be following the global suit.

The PhonePe CEO in an exclusive chat with CNBC-TV18 said, "India saw a bunch of corrections during Covid-19, where people actually had to downsize because a lot of startups in India are still very nascent. The ecosystem is equity funded and not profit funded. I think it’s very different than the large big tech platforms in the U.S. who are conducting massive layoffs worldwide."

"Indian founders are not following that suit and the market overall is also a bit more empathetic," Nigam added.

As the startup ecosystem endures a funding winter and the subsequent slowdown, Nigam stressed on the fact that company culture will always trump the business cycles. According to the PhonePe CEO, startup founders can ride out bad business cycles if they are consistent in their culture.

"Don’t let market cycles distort your culture," Nigam claimed. He further added, "when companies were laying off employees in Covid-19, we said we won’t do that, we never conducted any layoffs. If you do right by people when the going gets tough, everyone does right by the company."