Udaan almost fired 60% staff
Friend works there. He kind of confirmed. Company is still struggling to find profitability. Not much margin in fmcg and food segment, which is their biggest pie of orders.
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LightMile44
MongoDB11mo
SastaEngineer
Razorpay11mo
I have a bunch of things to say out loud
- I feel for the employees who got impacted. In no world a layoff is justified
- I also feel for the founders at Udaan. Doing this would’ve been difficult
- I don’t think these events collided. Generally from what I observed news goes out only when the startups decide that it should go out (it may be possible that they raised funding months ago and released the news now) In no way this justifies anything though. But yeah, as some other comments are saying, controlling costs might’ve become top priority to justify the valuation
- There are a few comments here saying “Giving money to kids to run these orgs is so wrong” “Founders do not know what they’re doing” and what not - I feel funny to read these comments. I don’t know how folks have the audacity to say shit like that. Saying such things and dissing founders of certain companies who are definitely in the wrong books makes absolute sense. But saying that for Udaan who’s been in the good books for such a long time feels odd. Tells how immature some of us are
All that said, I am not justifying a layoff. I am just saying that let’s not jump into conclusions and think that the job of a founder is easy. And let’s really not badmouth all the founders who are doing layoffs and think that they could’ve done something better. Nobody complained when every founder was growing massively during covid times when there was enough money in the market. Nobody questioned their intent when they were giving 100% hikes every once in a while.
Funding is slowing down. Let’s accept it. When funding was at an all time high every founder took advantage and surfed that wave. Let’s accept that too. And now when things are going off, founders (even the good ones) are looking at layoffs to justify valuations. Let’s accept this too.
CallMeShirley
Citymall11mo
@SastaEngineer extremely well written I think this echoes exactly what I feel. In Udaan's case, the wrong model got overly funded in a bullish for Bharat B2B era. Without going to deep into it's issues. Not sure who is to be blamed, maybe those who control the capital.
Net net it is sad for everyone, there was a real opportunity, but it's currently struggling to be achieved.
Thanks for penning the above down.
Careermode
LivSpace11mo
Wow, that is harsh. I understand their valuation dropped, and they're not doing too well. But to overlap both of these things is harsh!
Babel
Yubi11mo
Anybody here at Udaan? Basis what I’d heard they shut down entire cities (like Mumbai). At least for some key categories.
What is the scene now?
dataninja
Unnamed11mo
Yes, they have. I've been impacted too. But it's all part of the bigger plan. As an employee who has been laid of it feels shitty to be in this position but if I look at the bigger picture of IPO quite frankly it makes sense. This is the last piece of puzzle on the bigger scheme of things.
They've bought down the valuation on their own terms, they'll be debt free post this and have a decent PMF to how. The idea is to take an exit which they'll get now. Them and all the investors. It's a back breaking task to go public and I've seen it far too closely. I have respect for the team that's taken the harsh decisions that needed to be taken without compromising on the severance pay and keeping a fairly decent culture. We all know of far too many startups that just went under, stopped paying salaries or had consistent reports of abusive culture none of which happened at Udaan.
So yeah, all said and done they've been fairly good to their employees. Time to get that exit now!
