News: More layoffs in sight: Conditional funding for Housing.com

HR Outsourcing

More layoffs in sight: Conditional funding for Housing.com

The Mumbai-based real estate start-up could possibly lay-off close to 600 employees as its next round of funding depends on it. After the last mass lay-off the workforce numbers were down to 1,800.
More layoffs in sight: Conditional funding for Housing.com

According to sources, to raise funds the start-up needs to downsize to 1,200 employees. A senior executive from the company commented on the matter, "It is difficult to put a number to the lay-offs. Housing hired indiscriminately in March and handed fat pay packets to whoever applied and ended up overstaffing. There was a bench in digital marketing once."

The company had a solid workforce of about 2,500 until March 2015 post which housing.com cut a large fraction of its workforce and brought down the number to 1,800.

Apart from the people who were fired there were several people, who voluntarily chose to quit. Those given pink slips were compensated with two or three-month severance pay. A one-month clause was written in it. There is not much information available about the equity share Rahul Yadav donated to its employees in June. Yadav’s share of stake was 4.57% in the company. "Modalities of Yadav's shares are currently being worked on," Housing chief executive Jason Kothari said.

Earlier this month, the start-up was in the news for firing 200 employees in an attempt to cut costs. Since the last few months the organization has closed down six divisions, and is now purely focusing on buying and selling of property and land. "Housing.com will now be laser focused on solving the pain points in home buying and selling, the largest real estate segment, and we are excited about the potential impact our solutions could have on consumers, developers and agents across the country. We will be reorganising the company to fit this new focused strategy and, to this end, expect to reduce our workforce," said Kothari. 

It is being said that opting for leaner operations and closing down important valuable divisions will continue to impact Housing.com’s image as an employer and brand in a negative way.

 

Read full story

Topics: HR Outsourcing, #Corporate

Did you find this story helpful?

Author

QUICK POLL

How do you envision AI transforming your work?