After going through a series of layoffs this year, the quick-commerce player, Dunzo, has now deferred the salaries of 50 percent of its employees for the month of June, as per the media report.
Dunzo Fefers June Salaries For 500 Employees
With this move, the Google-backed company’s top management will be the most affected, according to the people aware of the developments.
It appears that the company reached this decision as it was facing issues managing its cash flows.
Earlier, the ecommerce platform raised $75 million during April this year, underscoring the company’s high cash burn rate.
During the same time, Dunzo fired around 300 employees in its second cost-cutting move, after it had let go of around 80 staffers in January 2023.
Dunzo has over 1,000 employees in total at present.
The company’s latest decision to defer salaries will impact about 500 of them, according to sources.
But, this decision also indicates that there could be more layoffs in the pipeline, said the sources.
Although, the startup has assured its staff that they would be paying them salaries later this month.
So far, Dunzo has not released any statement in this regard.
Increasing Focus On Sourcing Products
For the unawares, the cost cutting at the Bengaluru-based company is not new.
It appears that Dunzo is also increasing focus on sourcing products through a marketplace model, over the past few months.
Not like earlier when it was fully relying on its network of dark stores.
Now, it buys products from the nearest supermarket and delivers them to customers, rather than storing items in-house contrary to what Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit and Zepto do.
As expected, this move has reportedly led to Dunzo reducing its dark store count by around 50 percent.
Besides this, the company is also charging higher delivery fees, delaying deliveries and also levying convenience fees on users as it looks to earn more money per order and put itself on a path to profitability.
Since 2015, Dunzo has raised close to $500 million from Reliance, Google, Lightrock, Lightbox, Blume Ventures and several others.
So far, Reliance is the largest shareholder with a 25.6 percent stake in the company.
Google stands as the second-largest with around 19 percent ownership in Dunzo, according to Tracxn.
