Zomato asks execs to leave in company-wide layoffs

MUMBAI: Food delivery aggregator Zomato is laying off employees across functions, including technology, product and marketing, said a person with knowledge of the development, asking to remain anonymous.

"There has been a regular performance-based churn of under 3% of our workforce; there's nothing more to it," a Zomato spokesperson said. Zomato had around 3,800 employees before this churn.

Zomato last laid off 520 employees, or 13% of its staff, in May 2020 in response to the downturn in business following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

So far in 2022, at least 17,000 people have lost their jobs as startups trim their workforce in a push to become profitable. Over the last month, tech firms Twitter, Meta and Amazon have also laid off 25,000 employees globally to cut costs.

Meanwhile, on Friday, its co-founder Mohit Gupta stepped down in the third major exit of a senior executive in a leadership role this month.

Gupta leaves after a four-and-a-half-year stint at the Gurugram-based firm. He joined the company in 2018, and was leading the food delivery unit of Zomato. The company had elevated him as the co-founder in 2020.

This follows the departures of Rahul Ganjoo, who was new initiatives head, and Siddharth Jhawar, the former head of Intercity Legends service, earlier this month. Gaurav Gupta, also previously a co-founder at Zomato, quit two months after the company went public.

“MG (Mohit Gupta) - you have been a brother, and a friend to me over the last few years. You have done a tremendous job here, brought us back from the brink of extinction, scaled the business to new heights, got us to profitability, and above all, coached me over the years to become capable of running such a large and complex business,” Zomato founder and chief executive Deepinder Goyal said in a note, according to a regulatory filing.

Gupta previously worked at travel portal Makemytrip and PepsiCo.

Zomato reported a September quarter net loss at ₹251 crore, down from ₹430 crore a year earlier following a rise in income from food delivery and wholesale Hyperpure unit. Revenue from operations were up by 62% to ₹1,661 crore from ₹1,024 crore a year earlier. Zomato shares stood at ₹61.15 apiece at the end of trading hours on Friday.