Meesho lays off 251 people in townhall meeting

Value ecommerce platform Meesho has let go of 251 employees in a recent round of layoffs as part of cost-cutting measures. The announcement was made during a townhall meeting on Friday. This impacts 15% of the workforce at Meesho.

The company had a little over 1,800 employees before the layoffs were announced. 

“We have taken a difficult decision to part ways with 251 Meeshoites constituting 15% of the employee base, as we look to work with a leaner organisational structure to achieve sustained profitability,” a company spokesperson said in a statement, in response to queries sent by YourStory. 

The statement also said, “We are committed to ensuring all those impacted have our full support and will be provided a separation package that includes a one-time severance payment of 2.5 months to 9 months (depending on tenure and designation), continued insurance benefits, job placement support, and accelerated vesting of ESOPs. We remain grateful for their contributions in building Meesho.”

In December 2022, the company had scrapped its work-from-anywhere policy and had asked employees to return to office at least once a week, starting June 2023. 

The company had let go of 150 employees back in April 2022 from its grocery vertical Farmiso, which was later rebranded to Meesho Superstore.

Meesho has also been at the receiving end of a seller complaint citing ‘unfair trade practices’ according to reports. 

According to a recent report by equity research firm Jeffries, SoftBank-backed Meesho is close to zero cash burn and is likely to achieve EBITDA breakeven this year. The report stated that the platform had seen a 9X growth in gross merchandise value of products sold over the last two years (CY 2020 to CY 2022) to reach $4.5 billion. 

(The story was updated to make a correction about the statement made by the company)