Snapdeal Idea Of Going ‘Independent’ To Hit Employees Hard, Over 80% To Be Handed Pink Slips

The Snapdeal founders have decided to give pink slips to about 80% of their employees. The news surfaced soon after the Snapdeal founders backed out from the merger deal with Flipkart.

As per media reports, the company management has given “verbal instructions to their department heads to prepare the list” of employees to be laid off. As mentioned, the current strength of Snapdeal is about 1,200 which will be reduced to just 200, post the mass layoff within the team.

The employees will get paid from the money secured from the sale of digital payments platform Freecharge to Axis bank for $60 Mn. The remaining amount will be pushed towards business development.

An email sent to the Snapdeal corporate communication team did not elicit any response till the time of publication.

Snapdeal Employees: Pink Slips Handed Over The Past Six Months

In the past six months, Snapdeal has been seen handing over pink slips to a large number of its employees.

In February 2017, Snapdeal revealed its plans to layoff 30% of its workforce within two months, affecting about 1,000 employees. At that point of time, Snapdeal was said to have an overall staff of 10,000 people which also included the teams from both its subsidiaries – FreeCharge and Vulcan Express.

As stated in a February 2017 report, “5,000-odd contract staff employed by the company’s logistics subsidiary Vulcan Express will be pared down as well as about 3,000 people on the rolls of the logistics company.”

The year also witnessed the exit of senior officials like Tony Navin, Abhishek Kumar, Govind Rajan, Sandeep Komaravelly and more from the company. Later, the founders also announced to take a 100% salary cut.

Last year, in February 2016, Snapdeal had put over 200 employees on a Performance Improvement Program and eventually let go of the additional staff.

Pink Slips, Plan B, And More: Snapdeal 2.0

Snapdeal has decided to take an independent path wherein the company will have to take a few tough decisions. The company will now progress with its Plan B, Snapdeal 2.0, thereby pivoting into a Taobao kind of an open marketplace set-up.

According to sources, in his last email to FreeCharge employees, Kunal Bahl had stated that the deal provides them with the necessary boost in resources to continue the journey towards building an ecommerce platform.

Well, on Snapdeal’s part, the decision to hand over pink slips to employees was one of the best ways to maintain cash reserves. On the other hand, how long will it be able to sustain the rest of the employees and the company still remains a question. As far as the employees are concerned, they must have been cursing their stars for merger deal being called off. What lies in Snapdeal 2.0’s future, will only be revealed in the times to come.

(The development was reported by Business Insider.)

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