Swiggy Lays Off 350 More Employees Due to Slower Than Expected Business Recovery

Swiggy is laying off 350 more employees as part of its ‘final realignment exercise'. In May, the food aggregator laid off 1,100 employees to mitigate the coronavirus lockdown impact. This second round of layoffs come at a time when COVID-19 cases in the country are at an all-time high and are now nearing 15 lakh cases. Swiggy says that the business ‘has only recovered 50 percent of its peak' and because of this they are forced to let go of 350 more employees.

Swiggy is offering impacted employees three to eight months of salary (based on tenure), and accelerated ESOP vesting as part of its severance package. These 350 employees will continue to avail accident, term, and health insurance benefits till December and an extra month of ex-gratia will also be offered for every year with the organisation. The company will also be offering learning support for skill development, job placement, and counselling services, amongst others.

Swiggy anticipated a better comeback after commencement of business, however only 50 percent of the peak has been achieved till now. In a statement, Swiggy said, “In May, we began the exercise of realigning resources to create capacity in higher potential areas with the optimism of the business attaining pre-covid-19 levels in the near-term. However, with the industry still only having recovered to about 50 percent of its peak, we have to, unfortunately, go ahead with this final realignment exercise, which will result in the net loss of 350 jobs."

During the COVID-19 lockdown, Swiggy has tried to revive its business by introducing alcohol delivery. It even forayed into grocery deliveries, and rebranded Swiggy Go instant pickup and drop service as Swiggy Genie. Apart from letting go of employees, it shut down its cloud kitchen business to cut costs. However, all of these steps still haven't helped Swiggy recover as quickly as it would've hoped for.

Just like Swiggy, competitor Zomato is also facing the brunt of the pandemic. It laid off over 500 employees in May, and cut salary of existing employees by 50 percent. Several tech companies like Uber, Ola, MakeMyTrip, and BookMyShow have had to resort to layoffs due to the current COVID-19 crisis, and job losses in the tech industry reached the 10,000 mark in May itself.

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