Swiggy on Monday announced it will lay off 1,100 employees which constitutes 13% of its workforce. Swiggy’s co-founder and CEO Sriharsha Majety announced the layoffs in a blog post which was emailed to all employees earlier today.
In the blog post, Majety highlighted how Covid-19 has affected the delivery business with uncertainty for how long it will continue like this. The company is taking such measures to prepare for long-term effects, he added. Swiggy plans to take more cost-cutting measures like scaling down or shutting down adjacent businesses that will not be relevant in the future. This would affect Swiggy’s cloud kitchens businesses the most.
The company will instead focus on more immediate areas like delivering groceries and essentials.
“This offers us opportunities to continue investing our efforts in grocery and other service offerings that we think will continue to do well. We are going to invest in these high-confidence efforts to focus not on surviving alone, but on growing along the way by adapting very quickly,” Majety said.
The company will also cut down on infrastructure like hubs and offices.
As for the laid off employees, Swiggy plans to compensate them with at least three months of salary. This is irrespective of their notice period or tenure. It will also offer an extra month of ex-gratia for every year the employees have spent at the company. These employees and their families will also be able to continue with medical insurance cover till December 31 this year, the company said.
