Swiggy Lays Off 380 Employees, CEO Calls Overhiring Case of ‘Poor Judgement’

Online food delivery platform Swiggy on Friday laid off 380 employees as part of a “restructuring exercise” citing challenging macroeconomic conditions, with its CEO Sriharsha Majety saying that overhiring was a case of “poor judgement” where he should have done better.

In an internal email, Majety, Co-Founder and CEO, also apologised to the affected employees and said the “extremely difficult decision” taken after “exploring all available options” and offered an employee assistance plan for the impacted people.

He said the growth rate for food delivery has slowed down versus the company’s projections.

“This meant that we needed to revisit our overall indirect costs to hit our profitability goals. While we’d already initiated actions on other indirect costs like infrastructure, office/facilities etc., we needed to right-size our overall personnel costs also in line with the projections for the future.

“Our overhiring is a case of poor judgement, and I should’ve done better here,” Majety said in the email.

Earlier in the morning, he had addressed a townhall of Swiggy employees.

As part of the employee assistance plan, Swiggy has offered cash payout ranging from three to six months based on the affected employees’ tenure and grade. They will receive either an assured three months pay or notice period plus 15 days ex-gratia for every completed year of service plus balance earned leave as per policy whichever is higher.

“This will assure all impacted employees with a minimum assured payout of three months. This includes variable pay / incentives at 100 percent. Joining Bonus, Retention bonus paid out will be waived off,” Majety said in the email.