Bangalore based online classifieds marketplace and hyperlocal service provider Quikr recently scrapped around 2000 employees from its verticals pan India in the last one and a half months. Quikr employs about 3500 employees in these verticals.
The mass layoff that started in November 2018 came to an end this Friday. Reason being, Quikr got stuck with a scam that resulted in 20 cr loss for the company
Numerous employees from Quikr Realty and Quikr’s car & bikes teams have been involved in the in-hand payment fraud. The company has filed a complaint against Accounts Manager- Rakesh Kumar, Area Manager- Rajat Goyal and Zonal Manager- Natasha Sipani and mass layoff news came just a week after these 3 officials were alleged to have scammed the company.
The company reduced Bengaluru’s team to 1500 employees from 2700. Pune team got shrunk to 32 employees from 170 previously whereas similar layoffs were also seen in Delhi and Mumbai.
The company told Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) on Saturday that it recently decided to modify its operating model, which resulted in some workforce rationalization and discontinuation of AtHomeDiva beauty services due to which 200 beauticians from Delhi were scrapped.
The platform is no more accepting new registrations on its Android app, while the website also shows that the service is not available in the capital.
Sources have also added that layoffs will not affect Quikr’s classified business as well as their recent tie-up with Bengaluru-based laundry company LaundryArena. Sources add that employees were well informed before the layoffs began and have been compensated with severance pay of 2 months. Some employees will be rehired to be included in Quikr’s other verticals.
The scam and layoffs might not affect some of Quikr’s verticals but while Quikr plans to go public by 2021, this might affect investors’ confidence as well as their reputation in the marketplace.
Quikr, founded in 2008 by Chulet as a classified’s website has 20 million monthly unique visitors, it’s currently present in 1200 cities nationwide. Quikr has spread its verticals across diverse domains like grocery, home rentals, beauty services (now scrapped off) and online recruitment.
So far, the company has raised around $352.8 million in funding from investors including Tiger Global, Kinnevik, Warburg Pincus, Matrix Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, eBay and NGP Capital (previously known as Nokia Growth Partners)
Quikr currently competes with players like 99acres.com, Housing.com, Proptiger.com, Square Yards, OLX, and others.
It seems like for India’s most valued start-ups their growth era has come to an end. This year we saw OYO, OLA and PayTm laying off their employees from time to time. The reason being, some want to cut down their costs while some are restructuring their business models or reinventing their verticals.
But this is not the case with Quikr that was scammed by its own employees. However, the company taking action right after the mishap is trying its best to be back on track. But we have to wait and see how investors react to this news
