DealShare shuts B2B business, lays off 130 employees

Tiger Global-backed ecommerce platform DealShare has decided to shut down its business-to-business (B2B) unit over the next few months as the vertical has failed to yield the desired results.

According to a report by Moneycontrol, around 130 employees were impacted by this development. 

Confirming the development, the Tiger-Global-backed unicorn said it is moving its operations to Gurugram and consolidating its business to focus on Jaipur, Delhi-NCR, Lucknow, and Kolkata markets.

"DealShare has been serving Indian consumers for the last five years and the company is continuing its efforts to strengthen its offerings and deliver value to our shareholders. We took some action in this direction by moving our operations to Gurugram and consolidating our business to focus on geographies of Jaipur, Delhi NCR, Lucknow and Kolkata with clear priorities on creating an online plus offline model," a company spokesperson said.

"We also took a conscious decision to focus on B2C business at this point to stay relevant to our consumers in the market. We have taken decisions of realigning our budgets, reorganising teams and locations, etc. Our immediate priorities will be to quickly organise the teams towards execution, complete the non-tech teams' transition to Gurgaon, prioritise key deliverables and swing into action," he added.

"As a result of this re-organisation, some of our colleagues will be leaving us. The company will do everything in our capacity to support them through this transition both financially and leveraging our networks to provide for a soft landing," he added.

The latest layoff round is the second such exercise by the company this year. In January 2023, it laid off around 100 employees—around 6% of its 1,500-strong workforce.

Earlier, in July this year, Vineet Rao, Co-founder and CEO at DealShare, stepped down as the CEO of the company. He will continue to hold his board position and will advise the company on appointing his successor, said a statement issued by the company. 

Started in 2018 by Rao, Sourjyendu Medda, Rajat Shikhar, and Sankar Bora, DealShare follows a group-buying model, offering greater discounts on large purchases.