We have already reached the mid of August this year and so far almost 8,000 persons have been laid off by 32 companies across India as revealed in the layoffs.fyi, a real-time layoff tracker.
Thousands Of Layoffs As Startups Focusing On Profit
Interestingly, most of these companies are startups which belong to the Information Technology (IT) sector.
It appears that the maximum number of layoffs this year came from Paytm as it let go of at least 3,500 employees in June reportedly.
So far, over 1.30 lakh layoffs have taken place this year alone across the world this includes the major ones among the Big Tech.
For instance, Intel let go of 15,000 employees, which is equal to 15 percent of its workforce – in an attempt “to deliver $10 billion in cost savings in 2025” on 1 August.
During the time when layoffs continued to affect the tech sector, overall hiring is witnessing a downward trend.
The white collar hiring has witnessed a decline of 8 percent as compared to last year, as the Naukri Jobspeak June 2024 report.
When it comes to the Jobspeak report, it calculates and records month-on-month hiring activity based on the job listings on the portal Naukri.com.
Why would This Happen?
Out of the 32 companies that have laid off almost 8000 employees, 20 startups are based in Bengaluru including popular names such as Unacademy, Byju’s, Ola, Licious, Swiggy, Simpl and Cult.fit.
General Secretary of All India IT and ITeS Employees’ Union (AIITEU), Saubhik Bhattacharya said, “The reason for these layoffs is pure cost-cutting.”
The Bengaluru-based Unacademy laid off 250 employees last month.
It appears that these startups have been cutting costs for over two years and have let go of at least 2,000 employees since 2022, according to a report in TechCrunch.
Meanwhile, upskilling and job search platform Bluelearn shut operations in July. According to their LinkedIn page, the Bengaluru-based startup had up to 50 employees. As per Naukri Jobspeak June 2024 report, hiring in the education sector has also witnessed a decline of 9 percent as compared to the last year.
Besides this, Media Sector such as Social media company ShareChat, microblogging startup Koo, Audio-streaming platform PocketFM laid off hundreds of employees.
Other industries such as Fintech – Paytm laid off 3,500 employees as of March 2024.
The Retail, Fitness, Food is also untouched as Walmart-owned Flipkart trimmed its workforce by 5-7 percent as it laid off 1,100-1,500 employees in January this year.
The other fitness startup, Cult.fit, which is backed by Zomato and Tata Digital, terminated 100-120 employees in January 2024.
The online food and grocery delivery platform Swiggy pruned 6 percent of its workforce as it laid off around 350-400 employees in January this year.
In addition to this, the meat delivery platform Licious terminated 80 employees in February this year.
