Swiggy
Swiggy plans to reduce its workforce by 8-10 per cent in order to cut costs during a slowdown in funding. Reportedly, the layoffs are also in line with the company’s goal of becoming operationally profitable before its initial public offering.
The job cuts will primarily affect employees working in product, engineering, and operations, stated Financial Express. The job cuts will affect around 6,000 roles at the food and grocery delivery platform.
Reportedly, the management has delayed submitting Swiggy’s initial paperwork for a public listing with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) due to the poor performance of technology stocks in India and globally.
Swiggy’s layoffs come shortly after its competitor, Zomato, also let go of around 3 per cent of its 3,800 employees in November 2022. A few weeks prior to the job cuts, Zomato experienced the departure of three high-level executives, including co-founder Mohit Gupta, initiatives head Rahul Ganjoo, and the former head of Intercity Legends service Siddharth Jhawar.
Hubilo
Hubilo, a virtual conference and event management start-up, has laid off approximately 35 per cent of its workforce. Reportedly, the company is undergoing restructuring process and is greatly affected by the global macroeconomic pressures.
As per Moneycontrol sources, the recent layoffs have affected 115 employees at the company. Additionally, the laid-off employees were provided with severance packages and other support for finding new employment.
This round of layoffs is taking place five months after the company’s first round of job cuts, in which it laid off about 12 per cent of its staff as the demand for online events decreased following the end of COVID-related lockdowns. Prior to this round of layoffs, Hubilo had approximately 330 employees.
The company, founded in 2015 by Vaibhav Jain and Mayank Agarwal, originally started as a virtual networking platform and virtual event organization platform, and claims to have over 1000 clients including well-known companies such as Facebook, Walmart, and the United Nations. It has also been hiring aggressively in 2020 and 2021 as the demand for virtual events increased during the pandemic.
Exotel
Exotel has reportedly laid off 15 per cent of its workforce, or 142 employees, due to poor performance. The cloud telephony company based in Bengaluru, took the decision after the company revised its performance improvement plan in November 2022
Reportedly, the notice period for affected employees began immediately after they were placed on the performance improvement plan. However, a representative from the company stated that the layoffs were a result of changes to the PIP policy and company restructuring, impacting 80 employees.
The company has also said to remove prior policy of giving employees two warnings before termination.
Sophos
As reported by Tech Crunch, Sophos, a cybersecurity company, is cutting approximately 10 per cent of its global workforce. The jobs cuts totals around 450 people, in order to achieve ‘optimal balance of growth and profitability.’ The layoff will affect various roles in India as well.
The company had previously opened a new data center in Mumbai in March of last year, which was its third in the Asia Pacific and Japan region, the other two being in Australia and Japan.
The company did not disclose the exact numbers, but a spokesperson confirmed that this move is part of an internal restructuring that led to job losses and the start of consultation periods, reported Tech Crunch. The company also said in a statement that the layoffs are difficult but necessary to achieve its goal of becoming a leading global innovator and provider of cybersecurity as a service, with managed detection and response (MDR) at its core.
The company sees MDR as a way to expand its managed services business, which is currently valued at more than $175 million and growing at over 50% per year.
