Swiggy may lay off over 250 employees in December: Report

Food delivery startup Swiggy is reportedly laying off over 250 employees this month across operations, technology, customer service, and supply chain. This could affect approximately 3-5 per cent of its workforce.

Swiggy's layoffs come just weeks after its main competitor Zomato laid off 3 per cent of its workforce due to poor performance.

According to a report in The Economic Times (ET), people in supply chain, operations, customer service, and tech roles are likely to be impacted.

"They want a very lean team structure across functions. Sensitisation workshops for employees are planned for later this month. They have appointed a consulting firm to advise them on the restructuring...Most of the layoffs are likely to happen in tech, engineering, product roles and operations," ET quoted sources as saying.

In a recent town hall, Swiggy's head of human resources, Girish Menon recently informed employees of performance-based exits during a town hall meeting. With the help of a consulting firm, the company has begun restructuring its teams. Swiggy is also said to have announced the promotion of several executives to the position of vice president. 

According to the report, Mihir Shah, Head of Operations, has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Operations.

"We concluded our performance cycle in October and have announced ratings and promotions at all levels. As with every cycle, we expect exits based on performance," Swiggy told ET. 

Furthermore, employees at Swiggy's instant grocery delivery platform, Instamart, are being transferred to other parts of the company in order to reduce cash burn. Instamart's expansion plans are said to be conservative by the company. The company is reportedly being cautious about Instamart's expansion plans.

Despite offering significant discounts, global brokerage firm Jefferies reported last month that Swiggy was rapidly losing market share to its competitor Zomato.

Swiggy decided to close its cloud kitchen brand, The Bowl Company, in Delhi and the national capital region (NCR) in November due to high losses.