B2B e-commerce unicorn Udaan has fired more than 100 employees, according to people aware of the developments. This comes days after the company had secured $340 million in capital.

The company has sacked staffers because of a fundamental shift in the way it operates, the sources added. The Bengaluru-based firm restructured its business units to merge the essentials business (FMCG, staples and pharma) and the discretionary business (general merchandise, lifestyle and electronics).

Vivek Gupta, who was in charge of the essentials business, moved away from his operational role. The company appointed Uday Bhaskar to lead the consolidated unit.

Customer-centric

“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,” said a Udaan spokesperson.

“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,” he added.

Targeting growth

Udaan fired over 500 staff across two phases in 2022. Udaan is targeting growth and profitability and be public-market ready in the next 12-18 months. Last week, the firm also managed to raise $340 million from new and existing backers as a part of equity and convertible debt.

Founded by former Flipkart executives, Sujeet Kumar, Amod Malviya and Gupta in 2016, Udaan has raised over $1.8 billion from investors like Tencent, DST Global and several others, as per Tracxn, a private markets data provider.

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