Snapdeal commences layoffs, to become profitable in two years

E-commerce major Snapdeal on Wednesday reported that it is rationalising a part of its workforce to become profitable in two years.

However, the company did not divulge the number of employees it will lay off in its endeavour to become profitable.

"On our journey towards becoming India's first profitable e-commerce company in two years, it is important that we continue to drive efficiency across all parts of our business," a Snapdeal spokesperson was quoted as saying in a statement.

"We have realigned our resources and teams to further these goals and drive high-quality business growth."

According to the statement, the company has made substantial upfront investments in building e-commerce infrastructure, such as marketplace, payments and logistics platforms.

"Snapdeal will further leverage these technology assets and realign its resources to become a leaner and more efficient business," the statement said.

"This comes after Snapdeal has already successfully completed a number of efficiency enhancing measures, which has led to its EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) increasing by 40 per cent in the first nine months of this financial year."

The company elaborated that efficiencies gained from many business process and operations optimisation initiatives have led to 35 per cent lower delivery costs, 75 per cent lower data hosting costs on account of Snapdeal's deployment of its private cloud solution, and 25 per cent lower company fixed costs.

"During this same period, Snapdeal has also seen its net revenues rapidly increase by 3.5X. Building on all of these substantial gains, Snapdeal expects to be the first profitable e-commerce company in India within two years,"

"Snapdeal's wholly owned logistics company, Vulcan Express, with its well-developed end-to-end capabilities is expected to turn profitable by the middle of this year. In addition to being Snapdeal's anchor logistics partner, it now services third-party clients as well."

The company has partnered with several global marquee investors and individuals such as SoftBank, BlackRock, Temasek, Foxconn, Alibaba, eBay Inc., Premji Invest, Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Ratan Tata, among others.

--IANS

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