E-tailer Shopclues lays off 52 employees

Gurgaon-based e-commerce marketplace Shopclues has laid off 52 personnel from its marketing and operations verticals, a spokesperson from the company confirmed the development on Twitter.

A Twitter user who goes by the name ‘Corporate PSU Bank Kumar’ was the first to break the development on the microblogging platform.

Shopclues fires 52 people across marketing and ops

— Corporate PSU Bank Kumar (@Corporatekumar_) March 22, 2018

Sayantan Sinha, Shopclues’ head of corporate communications, responded to the tweet, “Unfortunate as it might be, rigors of a merit based system requires that we keep the bar high on individual performance. As we wrap up the review cycle for FY18, this decision has impacted less than 4% of the total workforce.”

Unfortunate as it might be, rigors of a merit based system requires that we keep the bar high on individual performance. As we wrap up the review cycle for FY18, this decision has impacted less than 4% of the total workforce.

— Sayantan Sinha (@MickySinha) March 22, 2018

The new round of lay offs follow some top-level exits from Shopclues earlier this month. Last week, The Hindu Business Line had reported that Nitin Kochhar, senior vice president for categories and marketplace, and Raunak Raheja, director of category management, had quit the marketplace.

While Kochhar has already joined logistics startup Rivigo as the business head for its Zoom vertical, Raheja has joined Flipkart as the business head of its retail exports function, their respective LinkedIn accounts show.

Shopclues’ status in India’s e-commerce space

Shopclues’ last major funding round was in January 2015 when it raised $100 million (Rs 620 crore) in Series D funding round from Tiger Global and existing investors. 

In November last year, it secured $15 million in an ad-for-equity deal from media conglomerate Bennett, Coleman and Company Ltd (BCCL). In May 2017, it had raised Rs 50 crore (around $7.7 million) in venture debt from InnoVen Capital.

Last month, Shopclues raised $1 million in a bridge round from Ronnie Screwvala’s Unilazer Ventures, media reports had stated.

In India, Shopclues competes with better-funded players such as Amazon, Flipkart and Paytm Mall.

Amazon has committed $5 billion to its operations in the country.

Last year, Japan’s SoftBank Group invested $2.4 billion (Rs 15,300 crore) into homegrown e-commerce firm Flipkart and in May, it invested $1.4 billion (about Rs 9,000 crore) into One97 Communications Ltd, the parent of digital wallet Paytm. Earlier this month, a report in The Economic Times stated that Alibaba-backed Paytm Mall had approached Singapore’s state investment firm Temasek and China’s Primavera Capital Group to raise an additional Rs 1,000 crore.

Besides these players, Walmart too has been in the news. Last week, ET reported that the US-based retailer may pick a large stake for $10-12 billion in Flipkart.

In an interaction with VCCircle last September, Shopclues’ co-founder Radhika Aggarwal said that the firm will file for an initial public offering (IPO) but several people in the know said that the firm may also consider merging with a larger rival.

The people mentioned above had told VCCircle that a merger was more likely as the company has low cash reserves, has scaled itself back in categories like large home appliances, and has missed gross merchandise volume targets.

A larger player that acquires Shopclues will stand to gain as it (the acquiring entity) can increase its market share and revenue due to Shopclues’ low burn rate, people in the know told VCCircle then.