Snapdeal To Vacate Offices In Mumbai And Gurugram Amidst Cost Cutting Woes

Online marketplace Snapdeal is ruling the headlines these days. As per a recent report by ET, the online marketplace has vacated its 90-seat office at a co-working hub in Andheri in Mumbai.

A source close to the development said, “The company does not want to operate out of the co-working space in Andheri anymore and has already moved. Its sales team was working out of Awfis, a co-working company in Mumbai.”

Snapdeal is also in the process of vacating its offices in Gurugram as well.

In June 2015, Snapdeal relocated to a new campus-style office 450,000 sq. ft (rent INR 58 – 83 per sq. ft) workplace in Gurugram. At that time, the space was touted to be a $22.4 Mn (INR 144 Cr) facility with a capacity of around 4,500 employees and was expected to consolidate Snapdeal’s eight different offices in the NCR region.

“Snapdeal plans to leave ASF Tower, where it occupies about 1.5 lakh sq ft, and some part of ASF Center, where it occupies 3.3 lakh sq ft,” said another person aware of the development.

An email sent to Snapdeal did not elicit a response at the time of publication.

In February, the company fired 600 employees in order to ‘rationalise part of its workforce’ on its way to becoming a profitable entity in the next two years. This included the workforce at Snapdeal, FreeCharge, and Vulcan Express.

Apart from this, the management also sent an internal mail, communicating that the founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal have conveyed their intent to take a 100% salary cut.

During its journey, the homegrown ecommerce giant has raised about $1.76 Bn funding in 12 rounds. The most recent investment came in August 2016 from Luxembourg-based firm Clouse SA, that invested another $21 Mn. This was a part of the same round where Snapdeal raised $200 Mn funding in February this year. The new round in February valued the company somewhere between $6.5-$7 Bn.

Earlier this month, amidst mounting losses, complaints, and revoked funding offers, Snapdeal’s biggest backer SoftBank reportedly proposed the sale of the company to its nemesis, online marketplace Flipkart.

After setting the stage for Snapdeal’s proposed sale to Flipkart, SoftBank is also said to have been targeting FreeCharge, the digital payment subsidiary of Snapdeal, after reports surfaced of  Paytm acquiring FreeCharge, with an aim to dominate the Indian digital payments space. Earlier today it was reported that FreeCharge is also in talks with Gurugram-based mobile wallet company MobiKwik for a potential merger.

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