In its second round of layoffs, Udaan dismisses around 350 workers

• ByStartupStory     |    November 5, 2022

In its second round of layoffs since June, business-to-business unicorn Udaan is letting go of up to 350 staff members as it works to increase productivity and turn a profit.

The layoff will affect about 10% of the company’s 3000 permanent employees, a person with knowledge of the situation told VCCircle. As part of the startup’s cost-cutting efforts, the company sacked 180 executives earlier this month, in June. With this, Udaan joins a number of businesses that had to fire staff members in order to focus on profitability amid a decline in funding.

The Morning Context, which broke the news first, indicated that the figure might be as high as 30% of its staff, or about 1,000 individuals. The individual who made the aforementioned statement said that while 300–350 of those sacked were paid by the corporation, the remaining were probably employed under contract.

“As we continue on our path to turning udaan into a profitable business, the push for efficiency enhancement and the growth of the business model has led to some system redundancies, with some positions no longer necessary, “In a statement, Udaan said.

“We are striving to provide the impacted staff with all necessary support, “The statement continued. The specifics of the severance package provided to current employees were not, however, made public by the corporation.

Aditya Pande, the chief financial officer of Udaan, informed the staff in an internal email last week that the company had raised $120 million in convertible notes and debt, with the help of current shareholders and bondholders. After the fundraising, Udaan had successfully raised approximately $350 million in debt and convertible notes over the previous four quarters.

The business has so far raised over $1.5 billion in equity and debt. The business also intends to list on the public market within the next 12 to 18 months. We will keep improving our cost structures and modelling since we think that efficiency is a key component of successful growth. To attain efficiency and scale, become more nimble, and maintain our competitiveness in the market, we have made a number of moves in this area with improved digital capabilities, according to Udaan.

Amod Malviya, Sujeet Kumar, and Vaibhav Gupta—all ex-Flipkart workers—co-founded Udaan in 2016. It links traders, wholesalers, retailers, and manufacturers on a single platform so they may communicate with one another directly for the best price and locate customers, suppliers, and products across categories.

Udaan raised $250 million earlier in January, with $50 million in debt and $200 million in convertible notes, or short-term financing that can be turned into stock.

In a $225 million round, Microsoft Corporation contributed to the company’s fundraising in April of this year. Additionally, it has financial support from a number of investors, including Octahedron Capital, Moonstone Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, DST Global, GGV Capital, Altimeter Capital, and Tencent.

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