There seems to be a lot of trouble brewing at Delhi-based fashion ecommerce player Yepme. A group of employees approached the assistant labour commissioner of Gurgaon alleging salary delays and mental pressure from the company. And this is the second group of employees to do so.
According to a report in VCCircle, the complaint states that employees of Growthways Trading (a subsidiary of Yepme parent VAS Data Services) have not been paid salaries for four months, from February through May.
Salaries for the four months before that also came very late after employees constantly followed up with the management.
Moreover, employees allege that the company is putting mental pressure on them to resign and that they have been asked to return company assets.
The first complaint was filed in March by a group of six employees complaining of salary delays and forced resignations.
There were also complains of the company asking employees to leave without any prior notice.
The company representatives had earlier promised to clear the pending dues of all the six employees before May 15. However, three months down the line, there has been so resolution.
The employees told VCCircle that neither the management nor its representatives turned up for a hearing called by the Labour Commission on July 6. The next hearing will take place on July 13.
When contacted, Vivek Gaur, co-founder and chief executive of Yepme, told VCCircle that they are going to reply to the authority. They have resolved (issues) in the past and they will resolve them now as well.
According a VCCircle report in February, troubles at Yepme started with a fund crunch at the firm.
Salaries started getting delayed in October 2016 and as of February 2017, many employees did not receive salaries for November, December and January.
Vivek also was unavailable whenever employees wanted to get in touch or speak with him.
Travel reimbursements too had not been cleared since August.
As per records, Yepme last raised funds $28.6 million in September 2015 from Malaysia’s Khazanah Nasional Berhad.
Before that it raised $32.5 million from Helion Venture Partners II LLC, Capricorn Capital Partners and Morpheus Media Fund in September 2014.
According to filing with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), VCCircle reports that VAS Data Services Pvt Ltd posted net sales of Rs 104.1 crore and a loss of Rs 183.8 crore. In FY15, it registered net sales of Rs 81.4 crore and an annual loss of Rs 106.3 crore. Losses have only been widening.
Total expenditure rose from Rs 187.9 crore in FY15 to Rs 290.3 crore in FY16.
In October 2015, Yepme unveiled plans of moving offline as well and announced that it plans to open 20 stores in Delhi-NCR.
Yepme was founded in 2010 by Sandeep Sharma (COO and CTO), Vivek Gaur and Anand Jadhav.