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Real estate portal, Housing, has been hogging the limelight from past several months, unfortunately for the wrong reasons. The trouble seems to be mounting for the company as they plan to lay off at least 600 employees in the next three months. This move seems to be aimed at controlling the cash burn and shift the focus to core technologies.
The company had hit the headlines a tad too many times after its CEO, Rahul Yadav, was fired post a dramatic turn of events. He had already raised doubts about the company’s sustainability and also had a tussle with the investors over “difference of opinion”.
A top level executive from the company told ET that “Housing is being completely restructured and performance for each employee across departments is being (scrutinized)”. He further added that “While some people have been asked to leave because businesses are being shut down other because if under performance and in some cases due to overstaffing.”
At the first glance, the numbers might seem to be minuscule, but laying off 600 employees in a company that employs just about 2,600 employees brews trouble. Mathematically speaking, Housing is planning to get rid of around 23% of its employees which includes the folks at the non-core businesses.
Housings upper management was recently subjected to a reshuffle and now it seems that the company’s laser focusing on revenue-generation and building an advertisement business. As part of its recuperative efforts, Housing will be focusing less on small cities and commercial properties.
Housing was one of the first real estate portals to come with an intuitive user interface and verified listing. It has one of the most dependable database of properties and this had helped it in reaching the skies. The company directly competes with CommonFloor, 99Acres and MagicBricks. As of now, Housing, has managed to raise in excess of $120 Mn and is valued at around $234 Mn. Housing was started in 2012 by a bunch of college-mates from IIT-Mumbai and four of them left the company bringing the total tally of founding members to eight.
We at INC42 have tried reaching out the company executives and will update the story once they respond.
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