Udaan, the Bengaluru-based B2B ecommerce unicorn, has fired approximately 120 employees just within a week of securing $340 million in its Series E funding round.
While it remains unclear which specific sectors were affected by the layoffs, Moneycontrol’s report indicates that the downsizing primarily impacted employees in marketing, finance, and operations.
Confirming the development, a spokesperson from Udaan mentioned that the company is actively working to offer all necessary support to the affected employees, including medical insurance and a compensation package.
“Over the last few years, we have made significant investments to build a solid and sustainable business. We believe in efficiency as a driver of profitable growth and are continuously making efforts to enhance efficiency, grow business sustainably and further improve customer experience,” the spokesperson said.
“We have already made significant progress in our journey towards building a profitable business and continue to make relevant interventions to our already proven business model, while remaining customer-centric and agile. However, these interventions have also resulted in some redundancies in the system,” the spokesperson added.
Established by Vaibhav Gupta, Sujeet Kumar, and Amod Malviya, Udaan specializes in supply chain and logistics operations with a focus on B2B trade. The platform asserts its ability to facilitate daily deliveries across more than 1,000 cities and 12,500 pin codes through udaanExpress. Noteworthy backers of Udaan include Lightspeed, Microsoft, and Tencent.
Last Thursday, the company secured fresh capital led by the UK-based savings and investment firm M&G Prudential, with participation from its existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and DST Global.
Continue Exploring: Udaan secures $340 Million in Series E funding, eyes public market in 12-18 months
Udaan intends to utilize these funds to enhance customer experience, expand market penetration, foster strategic vendor partnerships, and reinforce long-term supply chain and credit capabilities.
Earlier, Udaan conducted operations with a nationwide scope but has recently opted for decentralization. Each warehouse now houses multiple products spanning categories such as FMCG, Food, Lifestyle, etc., as per the report.
Earlier, the FMCG team operated nationally, but the new approach involves organizing operations on a cluster basis. This entails assigning distinct teams to different clusters, with each team responsible for overseeing all products within its designated cluster, irrespective of categories.
In the fiscal year FY23, Udaan witnessed a 43% reduction in operating revenue, declining from INR 9,897.3 Cr in the preceding fiscal year to INR 5,609 Cr.