US-based e-commerce giant eBay has today sacked a handful of product and tech engineers that it employed at its Bengaluru development center, reports Tech In Asia. The company hasn’t mentioned the exact number of employees affected but eBay India’s MD Latif Nathani has confirmed the layoffs saying that this can be called a ‘benching’ rather than a ‘firing’ of sorts.
An eBay spokesperson in a statement sent to The Tech Portal confirms the work force reduction and adds,
As a normal course of business, eBay regularly reviews its operational structure and today we announced some changes to our global product and technology team. As a result, we are reducing our overall technology workforce in Bangalore and shifting work to other global centers around the world. eBay’s Bangalore Centre will now focus on India-dedicated product and development work.
The statement further stated there is an existing product and technology team in Bangalore that will continue to support the eBay India business. Also, the company has retained a substantial amount of data analytics engineers, who may be moving to the U.S in the coming months. Nathani further mentions that the company will remain committed to investing in the development of core technological products for eBay India, and stay focused on delivering growth.
For the past year, the company has undergone a rough patch due to the major restructuring process after its split from PayPal, the largest digital wallet service it acquired for $1.5 billion in 2002. Last year, the corporate restructuring was accompanied with the sacking of over 350 employees from its Bengaluru and Chennai development centers.
To curb its existential crisis, the company is planning to integrate the ubiquitous machine learning technologies into the core of its platform. eBay has just recently acquired two machine learning startups – Expertmaker and SalesPredict – to monitor an individuals’ buying preferences and try to predict consumer behavior for online shopping.
In India, the company has faced immense competition from major e-commerce platform including Flipkart, Amazon, and Snapdeal. But, eBay now plans to revamp its e-commerce offering, building a closer connect to small retailers and millennial shoppers.
