After Snapdeal ended all strategic talks and decided to continue independently as an ecommerce marketplace, ANI reports that it will be laying off 80% of its workforce.
A senior official of the company told ANI that the management has given verbal instructions to their department heads to prepare the list.
On Monday, Snapdeal officially called off the sale to rival Flipkart after co-founder Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal backed out of the deal with the decision of running a leaner independent venture, Snapdeal 2.0.
Funds from the sale of its non-crore assets will help the company survive. Last week, it sold its payments arm FreeCharge to Axis Bank for Rs 385 crore.
"Snapdeal has been exploring strategic options over the last several months. The company has now decided to pursue an independent path and is terminating all strategic discussions as a result," it said.
The company says that it now has a new direction, which is Snapdeal 2.0.
“We have a new and compelling direction - Snapdeal 2.0 - that uniquely furthers this vision, and have made significant progress towards the ability to execute this by achieving a gross profit this month. In addition, with the sale of certain non-core assets, Snapdeal is expected to be financially self-sustainable. We look forward to the support of our community, including employees, sellers, buyers and other stakeholders in helping us create a designed-for-India commerce platform,” Snapdeal’s spokesperson said.
ANI reports that with the money from the sale of Freecharge received ($50 million), the firm has decided to sack around 1000 employees out of their present workforce of 1200, and carry forward with the remaining.
When contacted, Snapdeal declined to comment on the same.
In July last year, the company had over 9,000 employees. However, the management cut down its workforce down to 1200, without any notice.
According to sources, from last Thursday evening, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal have firmly instructed their business and technical heads to restructure their teams and begin the paperwork for their layoff.