Quikr now seems to taking some bold steps to further streamline its business and aim for profitability. After acquiring real-estate platform CommonFloor for around $200 million, Quikr has now shut down the office of FlatChat. CommonFloor had acquired controlling stake in FlatChat in 2014.
A couple of months after acquiring CommonFloor, around 150 employees of the company were asked to leave by Quikr. However, this time, the company has given employees of Flatchat an option to join one of its portfolio companies and move geographically. But, most of the people have quit as they were not comfortable to relocate.
One of the employee facing this situation has revealed that the company isn’t even providing severance package and has given just a month’s notice. The employees further said that out of a 52 person team of Flatchat, only the technology team has been hired by Quikr.
Another person, who was also asked to resign, suggested that the company is now looking to achieve profitability. They were also given hints to look out for new job. Along with this, Flatchat’s office in Domlur has been put on lease by the property owner.
Quikr says that it is consolidating its assets after the Commonfloor acquisition. A company’s spokesperson said,
Flatchat is merged with our messaging service Quikr Nxt. We have increased capacity in our Bengaluru campus to bring everybody together under one roof and have also taken more office space across India by signing close to seven leases for space in the past couple of month.
We continue to operate Commonfloor, Realty Compass and IRX after the acquisitions. Each of these companies compliment QuikrHomes’ product portfolio on residential and commercial side of real estate while addressing consumer and business needs.
FlatChat was founded in 2014 by Gaurav Munjal and Hemesh Singh. The mobile-based platform, which helps students and bachelors find accommodation and flatmates, has around 3-lakh users on its platform. It also has over 10,000 users in Singapore, where the app was launched in 2015. It had raised $2.5 million from CommonFloor in 2015.
CommonFloor was founded in 2007 by Sumit Jain, Lalit Mangal and Vikas Malpani. The online real estate company had raised $63 million in four rounds of funding from Tiger Global, Accel and Google Capital. At the time of acquisition, CommonFloor had around 1000 employees across India.
