Snapdeal’s internal mail confirms layoffs, salary cuts

In a recent official mail to the entire staff, founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal admitted to the need to tighten the belt and in the process, let go of some people.

The suspicions around Snapdeal’s plans to cut down its workforce have turned out to be true, and the situation looks extremely grim. In a recent official mail to the entire staff, founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal admitted to having made mistakes in the past, and to correct its course the company will have to tighten its belt and in the process, let go of some people.

The internal official mail that the founders sent to the staff, of which HRKatha has a copy, they said, “As part of our overall path to profitability plan, which is currently in full swing, we will be reorganising the company into a lean, focussed, and entrepreneurial one. We are combining teams, reducing layers, eliminating non-core projects and strengthening the focus on profitable growth. Sadly, we will also be saying really painful goodbyes to some of our colleagues in this process.”

As per the mail, both the founders have also pledged not to take a salary, for an unspecified period, while a few other senior officials may also be voluntarily taking a cut in their salaries. “We believe that every resource of the company should be deployed for driving us towards profitable growth and with this announcement, both Rohit and I are taking a 100 per cent salary cut,” they wrote.

The organisation, which was once seen as a top contender for the number one e-commerce company, in terms of sales, in the country, has been riding tough times over the last 12–15 months. The Gurgaon-based company has been hit hard by a combination of mounting losses, ongoing churn of the top leadership in the company, and the rapid growth of rival Amazon over the same period.

In addition, as was seen in the past with Flipkart’s delayed and denied job offers and the retrenchment drives undertaken by other e-commerce players, such as Grofers and Zomato, once again it is a case of impulsive bulk-hiring decisions. The founders agree to having been agile and over-confident, considering the flow of capital in the business in the past and consequently having taken some wrong decisions.

“Did we make errors in our execution? No doubt about that. Over the last 2–3 years, with all the capital coming into this market, our entire industry, including ourselves, started making mistakes. We started growing our business much before the right economic model and market fit was figured out.”

The founders agree to have started ‘new projects’ before having perfected the existing ones and adding capacities more than required. Their mail read, “We started building our team and capabilities for a much larger size of business than what was required with the present scale.”

Although, the number of jobs being cut hasn’t been made clear yet, there is panic in the entire workforce as most fear losing their jobs. As per the grapevine, the business may be looking at a complete shutdown across certain locations or business verticals.