NEW DELHI : ṁ Nasdaq-listed Freshworks Inc. has fired round 90 workers globally, turning into the most recent in a sequence of know-how companies to trim their workforce amid a funding winter and a meltdown in tech shares.
The software-as-a-service (SaaS) agency laid off workers throughout product, advertising and marketing, and gross sales verticals as a part of a restructuring train.
“To gas our enterprise development, we made organizational modifications to create higher alignment throughout the corporate. We shifted some current roles in product, advertising and marketing and gross sales to assist extra important initiatives and lowered the necessity for a small variety of others – lower than 2% of our workforce. Freshworks didn’t do a company-wide layoff,” an organization spokesperson mentioned.
Shares of Freshworks fell 3.43% on Thursday to shut at $14.63 apiece. On Friday, the inventory rebounded 2.8% to $15.80 in early buying and selling on Nasdaq.
A complete of 60 workers have been impacted in India, which is almost 1% of the corporate’s 5,500-strong international headcount. The corporate, which was co-founded in 2010 in Chennai earlier than shifting its headquarters to San Mateo, California, within the US, continues to have a big workforce in India.
This yr has been marked by a sequence of layoffs by tech firms worldwide as they sought to reorient their companies in a post-covid enterprise setting. Mirroring the enterprise turmoil, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index has misplaced greater than 31% since January, eroding the wealth of buyers of a number of giant corporates.
With investor sentiment hammered, tech companies have been chopping prices to make sure an extended runway. Layoffs have been rampant as firms labored to preserve money and defend margins.
Thus far, international tech giants akin to Meta (Fb), Twitter and Amazon in addition to Indian SaaS companies akin to Chargebee, Clear, and FarEye have lowered their headcount.
Final month, Tiger World-Chargebee laid off round 10% of its workforce or 142 workers. The step was taken to deal with the continuing macroeconomic challenges and likewise to pare debt collected up to now few years, Chargebee co-founder Krish Subramanian had mentioned.
Additionally, logistics SaaS startup FarEye laid off round 250 workers in June. The corporate needed to make some arduous choices to cut back its workforce throughout operations and providers, Kushal Nahata, chief govt officer and co-founder, FarEye, mentioned on the time.
Nonetheless, some companies within the SaaS house are attempting to chop different prices to guard jobs. As an example, Freshworks’ rival Zoho plans to decrease its advertising and marketing prices to mitigate the impression of the unfavourable macroeconomic state of affairs, as a substitute of letting go of its workers.
“We’re optimistic for the following few years, however on the similar time, practical because of the ongoing market circumstances,” Zoho co-founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu mentioned final month.
The layoffs, nonetheless, should not restricted to the SaaS startups as these working in edtech, ecommerce, logistics and crypto segments have additionally fired employees.
Edtech startups, together with two of the biggest edtech giants Byju’s and Unacademy, have laid off 1000’s of workers because the sector undergoes a churn amid reopening of academic establishments and a liquidity crunch. Different edtech startups that gave pink slips to their workers embody Frontrow, LEAD, Toppr, Byju’s-owned WhiteHat Jr, SuperLearn and Eruditus.
Within the e-commerce house, startups like B2B (business-to-business) platform Udaan, e-commerce enabler Dukaan, fast commerce startup Fraazo, used automobile market Cars24 and social commerce platforms CityMall, Meesho and Trell have sacked workers in one of many harshest years for Indian startups.
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