By Sneha Johari and Nikhil Pahwa Zomato has laid off around 300 employees - around 10% of its work-force of 3000 - most of them in the US content teams, reports TechCrunch. The employees, according to the report, were people who collected data from restaurants. Why is Zomato doing this? The layoffs in content point towards a shift in focus, which Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal elaborates on in the memo, also published here. The statement "The time has come for us to focus deeply on transactions in countries where it matters," explains it: 1. Zomato needs to focus on markets that matter, and India is key: While the companys expansion into 22 countries brought great PR, especially its acquisitions, of these 22 countries, which of Zomato's markets are really going to bring it growth (volume, revenues, valuation)? Things probably weren't as messy as, say, Airtel in Africa, but for a significantly smaller company, especially one that has had issues retaining senior leadership (read this, this and this), management bandwidth was fairly stretched. The re-prioritization helps, Goyal's memo indicates the creation of two clusters: - The high priority markets (called Full Stack) include India, the Middle East, South East Asia (the Philippines and Indonesia), and ANZ (Australia and New Zealand). In these markets, Zomato has high traffic, and will focus on both ad sales and transaction businesses. - The other markets (called Enterprise) are where Zomato either doesn't have high traffic or a dominant position, where it will focus on its transaction business. The other markets are going to be audience led,…
