Uber trims India workforce; LimeRoad raises fresh funds

Ride-hailing giant Uber has sacked its employees in India. Gurugram-based A M Marketplaces, which runs the social commerce platform LimeRoad, has raised fresh funds. 

Uber trims its workforce

Ride-hailing giant Uber has sacked 10-15% of its India employees as part of a global retrenchment drive. It has 350-400 employees in India, The Economic Times reports.

The company will lay off 350 people across the world, with 70% of that in the United States and Canada, the report said.

Uber India constitutes about 2% of Uber's revenue but contributes to a large part of its expenses, which makes it a target for cost-cutting, the report revealed.

The  San Francisco, US-based company said this move will impact its operations in India. 

LimeRoad raises fresh funds 

Gurugram-based A M Marketplaces, which runs the social commerce platform LimeRoad, has raised Rs 3.19 crore from Mauritius-based MA WillMind Holdings Limited, news website Entrackr reported.

Citing filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, the report said the latest round valued the company at Rs 838.5 crore.

LimeRoad last raised equity funding in 2015 when its existing investors, private equity firm Lightspeed Management and venture capital firms Matrix Partners and Tiger Global, infused around $30 million in the firm.

The preceding year, the startup had raised around $15 million from a clutch of investors including Matrix Partners, Tiger Global and Lightspeed. 

The startup was founded in 2012 by former Skype executive Suchi Mukherjee, Manish Saksena, the former operations chief of Tommy Hilfiger India and Ankush Mehra, former head of supply chain at Reliance Hypermarkets. 

It offers apparel, beauty products, bags, food and gift-items through its online platform and brick-and-mortar stores. Apart from fashion apparel, the startup also retails home furnishings and lifestyle products.

The company has made a number of new appointments recently to strengthen its leadership team. In June, it appointed Pankaj Jain as a chief financial officer (CFO) and early this month, it hired Ragini Singh as vice president for community and creative and Adesh Kumar as director of engineering.