IPO-bound food and delivery major Swiggy will layoff nearly 350-400 employees as a restructuring move to cut costs, according to sources.
Swiggy’s move will impact nearly 6 per cent of its workforce across teams such as technology, call centre, and corporate roles, the sources added. The company has around 6,000 employees on its payroll. The layoffs will be conducted gradually over the coming weeks, said the sources.
The Bengaluru-based company had let go of 380 employees in January 2023 and even shut its meat marketplace in a bid to lower costs.
Swiggy’s food-delivery business is profitable, but has still been burning cash on Instamart, its grocery unit. The company is optimising on all fronts to cut cost and showcase better financials before approaching the public markets.
Swiggy joins the likes of large internet firms, including digital payments firm Paytm and e-commerce major Flipkart, which have restructured teams to cut costs amid a prolonged downturn in the technology sector.
The food and grocerry delivery major is eyeing a public market listing later this year, and is believed to have lined up investment bankers for the IPO.
Invesco raises Swiggy’s valuation to $8.5 b
Besides layoffs, Swiggy also has witnessed several top-level exits, including that of Sidharth Satpathy, Dale Vaz, Karthik Gurumurthy, Ashish Lingamneni, Nishad Kenkre, and Anuj Rathi.
Recently, Swiggy’s investor Invesco marked up the company’s valuation to $8.3 billion, which is the second-time increase in its assessment of fair value in the past three months. The asset manager holds 2 per cent take in Swiggy. In October last year, Invesco had marked up Swiggy’s valuation by 42 per cent to $7.85 billion.
The company had recently appointed former Diageo India MD and CEO, Anand Kripalu, to its board as an independent director and chairman of its board.
Prosus, the largest shareholder in Swiggy, on November 30 said the Indian food-delivery major’s loss narrowed 35 per cent from a year ago to $208 million for the half year ended September 30.