- On Wednesday, ShareChat laid off 101 employees as the regional social media company expects this year’s advertising market to be volatile.
On Wednesday, ShareChat laid off 101 employees as the regional social media company expects this year’s advertising market to be volatile.
Early Wednesday morning, the Twitter-backed firm sent an email to workers telling them about the various cost-cutting steps. The five-year-old business had only begun monetizing the website in October of last year by ads. However, the economic slowdown led by the Covid-19 pandemic has severely hurt the advertising market.
“We need to concentrate on our core product, and feed recommendations are guided levers of growth while scaling back on the others. In terms of only picking bets that move the needle for growth, we need to go back to our fundamentals, “Ankush Sachdeva, Co-Founder & CEO, ShareChat said in the email. “We think this year’s Ad Market will remain volatile. To these new expectations, we are streamlining our revenue teams.
“ShareChat is founded by the relentless hard work and honesty our people bring to work every day. This is an incredibly tough call for us. I hope you understand why we needed to do it to support the company and see it on the other side of this pandemic, said Sachdeva.
In August last year, Bengaluru-based ShareChat, which competes with Facebook and TikTok, raised $100 million from the Twitter microblogging site and a few other investors. It also includes its investors TrustBridge Partners, Shunwei Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and SAIF Capital. In India, it has about 60 million active monthly users.
The spokesperson for ShareChat confirmed the development and said the global pandemic together with various local market uncertainties had an impact on its business plans, pushing it towards tough decisions including a revised leaner structure.
For four months, the laid-off workers will be given the option of taking a ‘garden leave’ of 2 months or half the salary. Garden leave is a procedure where, while staying on the payroll, a fired employee remains away from work throughout the notice period. Besides that, laid-off workers will get a 1-month ex gratia for each year they’ve worked for the company.
Sachdeva said the workers affected would continue to be covered by ShareChat’s health insurance program until the end of the year, adding that the company would extend the timeframe for the stocks held by employees until the end of the year.
He said the company would help all the affected employees identify appropriate job opportunities and link them through other organizations, recruiters, and agencies. It also tied up a professional resume builder to help employees build their resume and profile for free from LinkedIn.
“Although I understand that no amount of benefits will assuage what you are going to do; we ‘re committed to doing this with as much respect as we can,” Sachdeva said. “Lastly, I want to thank those of you who will be leaving us during these years for your contribution to the vision of the business. Please take my apologies.
A lot of startups are suffering right now due to ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Swiggy, Livpsace, Zomato, and a lot more have released employees to cut down costs.
