Online marketplace Snapdeal that is struggling due to a cash crunch is now in the process of vacating over 60% of its office space in Gurgaon. According to a report in the Economic Times, Snapdeal is now moving its office into a single tower in line with shrinking operations. In fact, it has already vacated its 90-seat co-working space in Mumbai.
While Snapdeal’s largest investor SoftBank is facilitating merger talks with rival Flipkart, Snapdeal is on a serious cost-cutting drive.
ET reports that as per an internal communication reviewed by TOI, Snapdeal is moving out of the B wing of AFS centre in Gurgaon. . “As you may be aware we are consolidating our offices across Gurgaon. We will vacate Centre B on April 30, 2017,” an email to company staffers said. “Essentially there will be one tower in all compared to two each in two compounds,” a person aware of the move told ET. A Snapdeal spokesperson confirmed to ET that some of the facilities will be relocated within the Gurgaon office.
Snapdeal moved to this office less than two years ago when it was aggressively hiring. However, amid severe cash crunch, the ecommerce major has already laid off several employees to cut costs. It went from being an 8,000-member company to now having a team of only 2,500 employees.
In Mumbai, Snapdeal was also operating from a co-working space ‘Awfis’. As part of its cost-cutting drive, it has also vacated this co-working space.
At a time when Snapdeal was struggling to raise funds, its largest investor SoftBank initiated talks for sale to Paytm of Flipkart. However, several reports suggest that talks have nearly finalized with Flipkart for a potential sale.