Grofers laying off 10 pc work force, revokes job offers

Grofers, a grocery delivery startup will lay off 10 percent of its workforce or around 100 employees. The SoftBank and Tiger Global Management funded start-up cited tough market conditions and revision in growth projection as the reasons for the layoffs.

The company has also revoked the job offers it made to 67 graduates.

"We will lay off around 100 employee which is around 10 percent of our total employee strength of around 1,100," said Prashant Verma, assistant vice-president for marketing at Grofers. "We had hired total fresh 134 graduates out of which the job offers of 67 have been revoked. Most of them were engineering graduates."

"We were unable to meet certain growth projections. We are making some strategic changes in the organization and are trying to achieve greater operational efficiencies,” he further added.

The startup is not only paying a severance package of one month's salary to the affected employees but is also working towards outplacement services to help the affected employees get employment outside, says Verma.

The layoffs at Grofers come at a time when questions are being raised on valuations of some e-commerce companies and reports of layoffs at some start-ups. However, despite the recent layoffs, experts believe that the hiring sentiment in the e-commerce sector or start-ups remains strong.