Retrenchment in e-commerce industry not unique to India: Sitharaman

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SME Times News Bureau | 25 Feb, 2017
Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said corporate downsizing and retrenchment in the country's e-commerce industry were not unique phenomena happening in India but were occurring globally.

The minister's comments came a day after major layoffs were announced by e-commerce major Snapdeal.

"This is not peculiar to India," the minister told reporters on Thursday evening adding that the sector is in a state of flux.

On Wednesday, e-commerce major Snapdeal reported that its founders have agreed to take a 100 per cent pay cut, even as the firm initiated a process to rationalise a part of its workforce to make the company profitable in two years.

The announcement was made through an email which was sent to the employees by the firm's co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. The company was started in February 2010.

However, the e-commerce major did not divulge the number of employees it plans to lay off in its endeavour to become profitable.

Accepting the fact that the company made errors in executing its business plans, the email read: "Has our company and industry been going through a troubled time? Absolutely. Did we make errors in our execution? No doubt about that."

"Over the last 2-3 years, with all the capital coming into this market, our entire industry, including ourselves, started making mistakes. We started growing our business much before the right economic model and market fit was figured out."

The company has partnered with several global marquee investors and individuals such as SoftBank, BlackRock, Temasek, Foxconn, Alibaba, eBay Inc., Premji Invest, Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Ratan Tata, among others.

On Thursday, homestays and alternate stays online platform Stayzilla suspended operations. The firm said that it is looking to reboot operations with a different business model.