Food and grocery delivery platform Swiggy will reduce its 6000-strong workforce by 8-10 percent as the firm looks to cut costs amid a funding winter, media report claimed on Thursday.
Sources cited by Financial Express said the mass layoff comes at a time when the delivery platform is looking to become profitable ahead of its upcoming IPO.
Employees in the product, engineering and operation divisions are likely to hit with the job cuts, the report said, adding that the company put several employees under a performance improvement plan (PIP) as it completed its October performance review.
Swiggy reportedly has a numbered rating system for all employees on a scale of 0-5 and those who were rated 2 were intimated about PIP and are most likely to be affected in the layoff round, as per the report.
“The work pressure has increased sharply over the past six months or so and the company has been shuffling teams for a while now…Employees are now just being asked to chase numbers and hit positive unit economics before the (public) listing,” FE quoted one of its sources as saying.
According to the report, Swiggy delayed the filing of preliminary papers with SEBI for its IPO given the poor performance of tech stocks in India and abroad. The management is now likely to file the draft papers in December 2023, it said.
Earlier in May 2022, Swiggy acquired restaurant discovery and reservation platform Dineout in a $120-million deal following which the former has been giving tough competition to rival Zomato on this front as well. Prior to the acquisition, the two were competitors in the food and grocery delivery segments.
Swiggy is yet to comment on the development.
The development comes at a time when multiple tech firms ranging to from majors like Microsoft, Meta, Amazon to startups like Zomato and Bounce are reducing their workforce strength amid a funding crunch, macro headwinds and an impending recession in the US.
(Edited by : C H Unnikrishnan)
