Zomato is laying off 13% of its workforce and cutting pay for the rest of its employees, with reductions going up to 50% for employees with higher pay. Those being laid off will be paid half their salary for the next 6 months, or until they find another job, whichever is earlier. The company announced this in a blog post today by CEO Deepinder Goyal. Goyal said that he would lead a global town hall soon online with employees for further details. “Over the next couple of days, [COO Gaurav Gupta], [Food Delivery CEO Mohit Gupta] and I will be getting on video calls with impacted employees to walk them through the next steps and help find them jobs as soon as possible,” Goyal said.
The pay cuts will kick in starting June and affected employees will get twice the usual ESOP grants. Goyal said he expects these cuts to be discontinued when the economy gets back on track, which “I forsee (and hope) to be 6 months from now”. Goyal said employees who have already accepted voluntary pay cuts would not have their pay cut further if the cut they volunteered for matches or exceeds what they recommend in June. Contractual employees who were hired via agencies will be paid two months of severance.
“We need to make sure that we preserve as much cash as possible to weather the storm if the business environment gets worse, or continues to be the same for the rest of the year or more,” Goyal said. “While we continue to build a more focused Zomato, we do not foresee having enough work for all our employees,” he said.
The company also decided to institute either permanent, partial or full time work-from-home for some employees, such as sales executives, since running offices is the company’s second highest expense after payrolls. Zomato’s 150 offices globally are mostly spaces for their sales and logistics teams. The sales team will be working from home full time.
Goyal said in the post that the company’s grocery delivery service is now operational in 185 cities in India and is about to launch in UAE and Lebanon.
