After slashing off a major 85 percent of its workforce in India, Chinese phone maker LeEco is now taking its consolidation drive to the United States. The company is looking to sell its massive 49-acre property it purchased from Yahoo last year, as reported by Reuters. It is already said to be involved in advanced talks with a little-known development firm for the sale.
LeEco, for those unaware, is one of the more widely known Chinese hardware manufacturers in addition to Xiaomi, Oppo, Huawei or even Vivo. Following pursuit to its counterparts, the company decided to dip its toes in the highly competitive market of the west with the release of a couple of handsets. The company’s founder and CEO Jia Yueting had then also decided to officially set up and drive the operations from a spectacular North American headquarters called Ecocity. It could house around 12,000 staff members.
But, the company is currently in no position to be spilling out capital to establish humongous offices in the U.S. LeEco, for those aloof, is currently suffering from a massive capital crunch due to its ambitious goal of rapidly expanding across the globe coupled with back-to-back product release timeline. The founder then also admitted that the company had set sight on far-reaching goals and was doling out cash relentlessly. But, it is now doing some damage control and has also bagged some fresh investment to the tunes of $4 billion to keep its ship afloat for some time.
The company has given up on its plans for setting up a North Amercian campus and is looking to sell its 49-acre property to add some extra capital back to its coffers. The cash-strapped hardware giant is currently struggling to repay suppliers and business partners, but this deal might help them sort things out.
Reuters further reports that LeEco has found itself a buyer in the form of Chinese developer Genzon Group. The company is not well-known outside of China but is ready to offer $260 million for the property, which is $10 million more than what the company spent on picking it up from Yahoo back in June 2016. While Genzon has already confirmed the chatter about it being interested in buying the property, it has kept hush on the financial details of the transaction. LeEco, on the other hand, decided not to disclose anything. It just sent out an email response saying,
We are not yet ready to share plans for the land as we are still in the initial planning phase.
Also, since the plans of setting up a humongous campus are off the tables, LeEco is now restricting the operational task force to more than 500 employees. This number is already half of the total workforce which was previously employed at LeEco’s Silicon Valley office last year. The company has handed out pink slips to several employees, even the researcher personnel working on its all-electric Tesla-challenger called the LeSee. It is also working with Faraday Future to help make their product ‘FF 91’ come to life. This electric vehicle is being developed through a collaborative effort between these two companies.
