B2B marketplace Udaan lays off over 100 employees shortly after raising $340M
Lightspeed and DST Global-backed Udaan raised $340 million in funding from UK’s M&G Plc last week.
Days after securing $340 million in Series E funding, business-to-business (B2B) marketplace has let go of 100-120 employees, as per a report by ET Retail.
A spokesperson for Udaan confirmed the development to YourStory.
“Over the last few years, we have made significant investments to build a solid and sustainable business. We believe in efficiency as a driver of profitable growth and are continuously making efforts to enhance efficiency, grow business sustainably and further improve customer experience," the spokesperson said.
"We have already made significant progress in our journey towards building a profitable business and continue to make relevant interventions to our already proven business model while remaining customer-centric and agile. However, these interventions have also resulted in some redundancies in the system,” they added.
The company is working towards providing all requisite support to the impacted employees, which includes medical insurance, compensation package as per company policy, and placement assistance, the spokesperson added.
“We remain committed to our goal of driving Kirana commerce and empowering small and medium businesses of Bharat by leveraging the power of ecommerce,” they noted.
In June last year, Udaan laid off nearly 200 employees, or 5% of its workforce as part of a larger cost-cutting measure.
Last week, the company raised $340 million in a mix of fresh equity and conversion of existing debt into equity. This came just months after the company restructured its business units following the exit of Chief Technology Officer Gaurav Bhalotia.
Founded in 2016 by former Flipkart executives Sujeet Kumar, Amod Malviya, and Vaibhav Gupta, Udaan is a B2B ecommerce platform with over three million retailers listed across categories such as fruits and vegetables, electronics, home and kitchen supplies, and lifestyle. Udaan supplies groceries and other products to sellers who further sell to customers.
The company has raised over $1.5 billion (debt and equity) so far from investors including Lightspeed, Tencent Holdings, and DST Global.
In FY23, Udaan’s losses narrowed 33% year-over-year to Rs 2,213 crore while operating revenue plunged 43% to Rs 5,609 crore compared to the previous year.
Edited by Affirunisa Kankudti