Ebay Goes On A Firing Spree; Lays Off Entire Product And Tech Team In India

US-based ecommerce marketplace eBay has reportedly fired its entire product and tech team in India, except 15 officials, who might move to the US, according to a report by TechInAsia.

While confirming the development, Latif Nathani, Managing Director, eBay India called it “benching” rather than “firing.” The fired officials were working out of eBay’s development centre in Bengaluru.

Commenting on the development, an official spokesperson from eBay said, “As a normal course of business, eBay regularly reviews its operational structure and today we announced some changes to our global product and technology team. As a result, we are reducing our overall technology workforce in Bengaluru and shifting work to other global centers around the world. We remain committed to India and will continue to invest in core product and technology development for eBay India.”

While the entire product and tech team has been fired, the analytics team stays intact, according to an official statement.

Earlier last year, eBay, before its split with PayPal, fired its 350 employees in India, across its development centres in Chennai and Bengaluru. Following that, another 50 employees were laid off by the ecommerce giant, as a part of its restructuring process, post its split with PayPal.

Where eBay operates as a major player in the US, India’s ecommerce market is predominantly dominated by Amazon and Flipkart. In July 2016, Flipkart decided to lay off 700-1000 underperforming employees when it faced a downfall in its valuation by Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe, and others.

Other major layoffs seen this year include:

• More than 150 CommonFloor employees were fired by Quikr after the real-estate portal was acquired by the ecommerce platform, this January.

• In April, InMobi fired close to 100 employees and Hiree fired 80% of its workforce.

• GirnarSoft-owned platforms had fired 60 employees in a bid to realign its management and resources to focus on its core areas.

• Grofers, which fired 10% of its employees in June.

• Snapdeal-backed GoJavas too suspended its operations and fired nearly 1500 of its employees.

• Ask Me shutdown its operations and gave pink slips to 4000 of its employees, vendors and others.

• Online cab aggregator Ola also reportedly fired 250 employees a week after shutting down TaxiForSure and laying off 1000 employees.
• In September 2016, micro-blogging platform Twitter decided to lay-off  80% of its employees based in Bengaluru.