Foodpanda Cuts Employee Count by 15 Percent in India

Rocket Internet's Indian wing of its food delivery platform Foodpanda has announced a 15 percent reduction in its workforce.

A Foodpanda spokesperson confirmed the development to Gadgets 360 in an emailed statement, in which the company said it that achieved a 98 percent automation rate in order processing, citing the reduced need for manual intervention as one of the reasons for the reduction in its overall work force.

Redundancies will be made across a few departments, and affected employees will be provided with due remuneration as well as provided assistance to discover other job options, the company said.

A Foodpanda spokesperson said that the company headcount was at 2,200 at present, which would mean around 330 redundancies were made at the company.

Founded in 2012, Foodpanda's leadership team in India has seen a lot of churn - co-founder Amit Kohli left the team in November 2013. Another co-founder Rohit Chadda stepped down as MD in August this year, while Akhilesh Bali went on to work on a startup called LimeTray, which helps restaurants market, engage, and sell to customers online.

(Also read: Rocket Internet's Rocky Flight in India)

The company said that it had bolstered its leadership ranks, and had developed proprietary technological innovations in rider and restaurant management, with 10 times the growth in number of orders from January to December 2015.

"We are certain that the team will help in smoothening operations and take us through the next phase of growth," said Foodpanda CEO Saurabh Kochhar in an emailed statement.

Foodpanda claims to have over 12,000 menus from restaurants across over 200 cities in India. A month ago, Foodpanda had announced that it has entered into an association with IRCTC to enable meal pre-orders, with a pilot starting in New Delhi.

Many food tech startups were in the news for layoffs this year, including highly funded players like TinyOwl and Zomato. Other startups like Spoonjoy and Dazo saw a shutdown of its operations, failing to raise a follow-on round. Bengaluru-based Eatlo had temporarily ceased its operations earlier this month.