Social commerce platform Meesho has sacked over 150 of its employees from the grocery business, which the company recently restructured and rebranded as Meesho Superstore from Farmiso earlier. This comes just days after the news of edtech startup Unacademy laying off over 1,000 employees in a major cost-cutting exercise.
Employees including on-roll staff and contractual educators were sacked in the past few weeks by Unacademy.
Meanwhile, Meesho last week said that it would merge its grocery arm into the main app, leading to talks of redundancies within the firm. A Meesho spokesperson confirming the layoffs told ET, “About 150 full time employees will be impacted by the restructuring of Meesho Superstore which is aimed at bringing in efficiencies.”
The person added that Meesho is offering severance packages and outplacement assistance to help those impacted secure new opportunities outside the company.
The company’s downsizing move will affect nearly 400 employees, according to sources. Meesho, on the other hand, has refuted this adding that only 150 of its staff were being asked to go. “The redundancies do not impact any positions at the core Meesho marketplace business, where we continue to hire and grow talent,” Meesho said in a blogpost on Monday.
An employee who was laid off by the company shared that the company said it was pivoting its grocery business and would move to a different model that won’t rely on city level executives. The person added none of the employees had been given prior notice about their terminations.
Meesho Superstore started as a pilot in Karnataka last year and had tier-II cities and customers with an emphasis on lower prices as its target audience.
