After Zomato and TinyOwl, it is the turn of the country’s largest food aggregator delivery platform firm Foodpanda to lay off employees. The company has fired 250-300 employees, representing approximately 15% of its total staff strength. The company has claimed that the layoffs are the result of it becoming more automated thus reducing the need for manual workers.
“Over the last months, Foodpanda has introduced numerous features and technology components which have helped to automate over 98% of our orders. Unfortunately, this resulted in lesser manual interventions thereby leading to surplus manpower, which was not benefitting the business nor our people’s careers,” Foodpanda said in response to queries from FE.
The layoff has occurred across all verticals of the food delivery platform but the company declined to comment on department specific cut in workforce. Currently the workforce at Foodpanda stands at 2,200 including 1,200 in its ground staff of delivery boys.
In August, TinyOwl fired 160 employees and followed it by firing another 112 in November. Food discovery platform, Zomato also laid off around 300 employees in October. Bengaluru-based food aggregator delivery platform, Eatlo and Mumbai-based hyperlocal grocery platform, Localbanya, have also suspended their operations temporarily.
Foodpanda said its customer-facing platform is not going to be affected because of the layoffs. According to the company, it has achieved positive unit economics across many cities and business segments in India while it is running profitable in other countries. “2016 will be the year wherein we are focused at providing value through delivering quality, reliability and seamless experience to our customers and partners,” Foodpanda said in a statement.