Housing To Lay Off Another 200 Employees Within 3 Months

Real estate portal Housing.com will let go another 200 employees in order to control cash burn and meet the tightened cost targets set by its shareholders, two people aware of the developments told ET. The layoffs will be across departments including product and marketing.

The decision was taken at the board meeting last Friday. At present, Housing has around 1,960 employees.

Emails sent out to the company did not elicit any responses.

Just three months back, when the company shuttered few departments including commercial properties, short stays and land business, it had fired 600 employees.

“The focus is to control cash burn,” said an investor in the company. Besides, a senior Housing executive said that department heads at Housing have been given targets in order to identify core strengths. “Unlike the last restructuring round where people were asked to leave because businesses were being shut down, this time the company is laying off without solid ground,” the executive said.

Earlier in July, CEO of Housing, Rahul Yadav, had been fired from the board of the company. His behaviour towards investors, partners and media had been the reason for the step being taken by the board.

Despite troubles mounting for the company, it has been in talks to raise $35 Mn in a new round of funding to be led by Japan’s Softbank. With this investment, the Japanese investor, which currently owns 32% stake in the company, may become a majority stakeholder in the company.

The real estate platform has raised over $120 Mn so far from international and domestic investors including SoftBank, Falcon Edge, DST Global, Qualcomm, Helion and Nexus Venture Partners.

Housing’s most competing players in this space are Google Capital-backed CommonFloor and InfoEdge-backed 99acres. Despite these players being in the business for over four to five years, Housing has managed to raise more funding than both of its rivals.

We have tried to reach out to them but haven’t heard back.

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