After Pivoting, Accel-Backed Virgio Lays Off 33% Workforce

Fashion startup Virgio has undertaken a workforce restructuring, resulting in the layoff of 20 employees, constituting 33% of its workforce. The cost-cutting exercise at Virgio primarily affected senior staff members, according to a Moneycontrol report.

Founded in 2022 by a former top executive of Myntra, Amar Nagaram, Virgio initially started initially as a platform focussing on fast fashion trends modelled after the now-banned Chinese fast fashion platform Shein. However, a few days back, Virgio pivoted from fast fashion to sustainable fashion company.

In addition to the layoffs, Virgio has restructured its top leadership and is actively recruiting to fill the vacant positions, the report added.

The startup has reportedly made following changes:

• OnePlus Nord India’s former marketing lead Hansa Nigam has joined as marketing head at Virgio, replacing Sachin Tandon. 
• Prachi Sharma, who boasts prior experience with brands like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, has taken over from Rajesh Narkar to lead Virgio’s sourcing and design department.
• Hansa Nigam, formerly the marketing lead for OnePlus Nord in India, has succeeded Sachin Tandon as the head of marketing at Virgio. 
• Suyash Motarwar, with previous roles at Flipkart and PharmEasy, now spearheads Virgio’s tech division, having replaced Nishant Khurana. 
• Ashish Ranka, previously affiliated with Flipkart and CoinSwitch, has joined as the new head of product, taking over from Neelesh Soni.

Inc42 reached out to Virgio, the startup declined to comment. 

It’s worth noting that all four departing executives – Narkar, Tandon, Khurana, and Soni – had previously worked at Myntra during Amar Nagaram’s tenure as CEO of the Walmart-owned company.

At the time of pivot, Nagaram said, “While fast fashion is agile, trendy and caters to the growing needs of the young blood in India, it also promotes over production, over consumption. Fast fashion companies use harmful fabrics and exploit labour to cut corners on pricing and quality fuelling the market with what will be sent to landfills. It’s a global crisis and we all are witnessing it. That’s why we’ve made a conscious choice to move our entire efforts to build a circular fashion brand.”

Since its launch Virgio raied $37.8 Mn in funding from the likes of Prosus Ventures, Accel and Alpha Wave. According to Nagaram, the funds raised during Series A still remains with the company, providing it a cash runway of three years.