Swiggy dismisses 380 employees. Here's the complete the letter that CEO Sriharsha addressed to employees

Swiggy announced it will end the meat market in the app since it was unable to enter the market, despite several versions.

Swiggy is just the latest Indian tech company to mass cut employees off to reduce costs amid uncertain macroeconomic and economic conditions. The company claims it has dismissed 380 employees in order to adapt to the “new normal” in the face of “challenging economic circumstances.” In a letter addressed to workers, Swiggy chief executive Sriharsha announced that the company would close the meat market on the app since it was unable to enter the market in spite of different versions. The app will still provide the delivery of meat through Instamart.

Swiggy will notify affected employees this morning via one-on-one interactions as well as the business has developed the “Employee Support Plan” to provide affected Swiggy users with financial aid throughout the transition. Other tech companies like Dunzo, ChatShare, and Meesho have also systematically laid of employees over the last few weeks and months. Here is the complete wording of the letter written from Swiggy CEO Sriharsha, to employees concerning the cutbacks.

Hello team,

Thank you for coming to the all-hands meeting earlier this morning. As I’d said in the meeting, we’re making the difficult decision of shrink in size our workforce as part of a restructuring program. This means that we’ll say goodbye to 380 skilled Swiggsters. This was an extremely difficult decision to make after examining every option available, and I’m deeply sorry for all of you for having to deal with this.

What is the reason we are doing this?

Adjusting to the new norm in 2021, fueled by an upsurge in demand in the second wave the food delivery industry was growing very rapidly. We also experienced a strong start with Instamart. With some excitement for what was to come, we put money in building our teams so that we could be able to meet the upcoming requirements of the various segments. In 2022 there have been two changes.

In the last year, amid tough macroeconomic conditions, businesses all over the world (public as well as private ) have been adjusting to the new norm, with new investment horizons and faster timelines to achieve profit. We’re not alone and have already made progress on our own timelines of profitability in food delivery and Instamart. Although our cash reserves allow us to be in a position to weather the worst of times however, we shouldn’t make this an excuse and should continue looking for ways to increase efficiency to ensure our long-term. Additionally the rate of growth in food delivery has decreased against our forecasts ( as have the majority of peer companies around the world ).

This means that we had to look at our indirect costs in order to achieve our goals for profitability.. Although we’d already taken initiatives on other indirect expenses like infrastructure, office facilities and so on, we had to reduce our overall human resource costs, which was also in line with estimates for the coming years. The hiring process we used to make is a sign of poor judgment and I could have taken a better approach here.

Moving Faster and Doing More in Less Time: In the past year we’ve identified a lot of areas that could be improved in our speed of execution. Due to the iterative building-up of various orgs there were additional layers added to pockets. This certainly raised our overhead for communication and reduced our flexibility. In other words, instead of accomplishing more by utilizing less resources in the first place, we were doing less and more in these instances. Being in multiple hyper-competitive areas implies that we have limited time to reduce our pace and we were looking to come up with the most deliberate design of our org to be more agile and effective simultaneously. We’re already applying the lessons from this work on org effectiveness to make sure this does not repeat itself.

What is this implying for the new verticals?

We remain completely dedicated to exploring new business opportunities, we’ve also had a look at some of our new sectors. Very soon we will shut our Meat marketplace. Although the team has performed excellently with strong inputs, we’ve not found the right product for our market despite the numerous various iterations. From a consumer perspective we’ll continue to provide delivery of meat through Instamart. We will also remain active in other emerging sectors.

The details of The employee assistance Plan for Swiggsters who have been impacted:

Cash payment of 3-6 months depending on their grade and tenure. will be guaranteed three-month pay period or a Notice period plus 15 days of ex-gratia for each year of service and the balance of earned leave, in accordance with the policy, or the higher amount. The policy will provide all affected employees with a minimum payment of 3 months. This includes variable pay and incentive payments at 100 percent. Retention Bonus, Joining Bonus that are paid out are waived off.

The annual vesting risk has been lifted off. We will extend vesting up to the next quarter starting from the latest working day. Additionally, they will be eligible to take part with this ESOP liquidity program, which is scheduled to begin July 2023.

Coverage for medical insurance for them and the nominated relatives until the 31st of May 2023.

Career transition assistance for the coming 3 months is available through our outplacement unit collaboration with well-known staffing agencies.

You will continue to have access to LinkedIn learning and our wellness portal until the 31st of March , 2023.

Relocating in the last year will get the cost of their relocation reimbursed if they decide to move to their former home or to a permanent address.

Will be able to keep the laptops they were given to work on to assist them in their job search.

For those who aren’t impacted:

For those not affected, I’m sure that this is going to be a difficult time for everyone too. We’ll be saying goodbye to a few of your friends, colleagues and colleagues and loved ones, and it’s not easy. We have considered this deeply and that this choice is not a good one but crucial for our path ahead. Today’s focus is on Swiggsters that are affected, and we are committed to supporting the transition of these people with compassion and respect. I’m sure you’ve got lots of questions regarding the best way forward, and we’ll be setting an appointment very soon to address the issues. Our overall business and execution is on an extremely positive path, and we’ve taken huge steps to improve the experience for consumers (including an excellently executed NYE celebration ) and our profitability.. We must continue to build on this momentum and adjust to the new norm and continue to work toward becoming the most effective version of ourselves.

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