Indiabulls’ social commerce venture Yaari lays off over 150 employees: Report

Yaari Digital Integrated Services, an entity launched by home finances company Indiabulls, which started the social commerce platform Yaari in 2021, has reportedly laid off almost 60 percent (150) of its employees in the last month.

Operating in the real estate and housing finance spaces, Yaari is likely to be soon shut down or merged with another Indiabulls entity, Dhani.com, according to sources cited by Inc42.

Yaari had a total employee count of around 250 to 300 employees. The startup has offices in three locations–Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. The majority of the affected employees worked from the Bengaluru office.

The employees reportedly asked to resign were working in the supply support, customer support, business development and marketing teams.

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Launched last year, the Yaari app is a social commerce marketplace that offers several curated consumer products. It enabled small businesses and individuals to start their businesses online through WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, and other social media channels.

“The app was supposed to work like Meesho. This is one reason why so many employees were hired from Meesho,” an employee told Inc42. 

The app was operating in the same space as Meesho, DealShare, Trell, and Shopsy. 

In April this year, Meesho laid off 150 employees from its grocery arm.

Yaari follows a growing list of startups that have resorted to layoffs amid high global inflation and rising interest rates across the world, along with other macro-economic factors such as the war in Europe. Many of these startups face the growing challenge of liquidity as well as keeping a financial runway amid the funding winter. 

In India, startups including MPL, FrontRow, Unacademy, Cars24, Vedantu, BYJU'S, and mfine have resorted to layoffs. Globally, Bolt and PayPal have also laid-off employees. Meanwhile, tech companies including Meta, Uber, Twitter, Microsoft, and Coinbase are enforcing hiring freezes or slowing down hiring. 

(This story has been updated with a new image.)