Ecommerce Rollup Startup UpScalio Fires 15% Employees

UpScalio has become the latest Indian startup to layoff employees amidst the funding winter, as the ecommerce rollup startup fired 15% of its employees last month. With the development, UpScalio has become the first Thrasio-style startup in the country to fire employees.

Citing sources, Entrackr reported that UpScalio fired 40% of its workforce, or around 60 employees, in December. However, a UpScalio spokesperson told Inc42 that the startup laid off only around 15% of its employees.

In a statement shared with Inc42, Ankur Singh, head of people and culture at UpScalio, said, “While UpScalio has been able to grow aggressively, we always keep a keen eye on profitability. As part of our standard annual employee appraisal process, in December, we have let go of 15% of our staff.”

The spokesperson said that the employees were laid off based on their November 2022 performance and that the impacted employees were from across departments.

While UpScalio did not immediately share the details of the severance package offered to the impacted employees, it said the severance package is “in line with the company policy”.

The layoffs come nine months after the ecommerce rollup startup raised $15 Mn in its pre-Series B funding round in March 2022 from Gulf Islamic Investments (GII), Northern Arc and Unity Bank. The startup has raised around $60 Mn from investors across funding rounds.

Founded in 2021 by Gautam Kshatriya, Saaim Khan and Nitin Agarwal, UpScalio is a Thrasio-style ecommerce startup that acquires majority stakes in ecommerce startups and helps them scale their business by 5-10X in 2-3 years.

UpScalio offers multi-marketplace management, digital marketing, branding, logistics, sourcing, finance and business operations, optimised using analytics for consumer goods brands. So far, it has acquired around 13 startups across multiple verticals.

The other fundamentals used by UpScalio while selecting a startup to add to its portfolio include companies with revenues upwards of $1 Mn and their profitability, which includes an EBITDA margin of at least 15%.

The startup competes with the likes of Mensa Brands, GlobalBees, GOAT Brand Labs, Evenflow, 10Club and Powerhouse91.

With the layoffs at UpScalio, over 2,500 ecommerce startup employees have lost their jobs since the start of 2022, according to Inc42’s ‘Indian Startup Layoff Tracker’.