The online real-estate portal, Housing.com, is going to lay off another 200 employees from the company in order to meet the costs target set by the shareholders of the company, reports Economic Times.
This isn’t the first time Housing is firing its staff. Couple of months ago, the company fired around 600 people so that it can focus on its core technology and product. Prior to that, the company closed four of its seven business units and laid off 160 employees.
It is believed that the company will layoffs employees from the departments including product, marketing and operations. As per the sources, the company decided about this at a board meeting in Mumbai on Friday.
The heads of the different departments within the company have also been given targets to identify core strengths. The company is now focusing on reducing its cash burn. Housing even hired advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal in order to reduce its cash burn and turn the company profitable.
An executive of the company, said to ET:
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 company is close to raising $35 million bridge round of funding from its existing investor – SoftBank, which currently owns 32% of the company.
Founded in 2012, Housing has raised $139.5 million in four funding rounds from four investors. The company is now focusing on generating revenues. For that, it has also diversified its business and launched an advertising platform named Brand Falcon.
The series of layoffs happening among highly blessed startups since past few months has indeed put us in a state to question the integrity of the Indian startups ecosystem.
The move has apparently spread shivers among employees working in startups. Over a time span of 3 months, Zomato has laid off 300 people, Mumbai-based food start-up TinyOwl has fired around 300 employees and Housing.com has bid goodbye to 600 employees. The toll doesn’t seem to halt as Housing.com will let go another 200 employees this month.
Indian startup ecosystem has shown an uprise that has never been witnessed before. This not only highlights the trouble that growing startups are facing in Indian ecosystem, but also the insecurities that lies in working in a company that has just started to gloom.
