eBay lays off 350 in India: Sources

'Exercise concluded earlier this month'

E-commerce major eBay India is said to have laid off more than 350 employees in the country as part of a global workforce re-balancing exercise, under which the company plans to cut its global employee base by seven per cent, or 2,400 jobs, during January-March.

The employees who got pink slips in India include more than 300 from eBay's PayPal's team that operates in Chennai, where the company has 1,000 employees, sources said. More than 50 members from eBay's team, which operates out of its development centre in Bengaluru, were asked to leave. The company has 300 employees at the Bengaluru office.

According to sources, the India units of eBay and PayPal concluded the exercise more than two weeks ago.

SAYING BYE-BYE TO SOME

• 2,400 jobs or 7% the company says it will cut its global employee base in January-March, as part of a workforce re-balancing exercise
   
• 300 from PayPal's team, which operates out of Chennai, were served pink slips in India, sources said
   
• 50 from eBay's team that operates out of its development centre in Bengaluru were asked to leave, sources said

While the details of lay-offs at PayPal could not be found, sources said the analytics team at eBay in Bengaluru was the worst-affected.

An eBay spokesperson refused to share the details of the lay-offs, even as he accepted the global re-balancing had had some impact on Indian teams.

"As part of eBay's global restructuring process, 2,400 employees, constituting seven per cent of total jobs, were affected. The global impact of jobs was on all businesses, including eBay Marketplace, PayPal and eBay enterprises," the spokesperson said. "As part of the job cuts, employees in India across eBay Marketplaces and PayPal were impacted as well."

The workforce re-balancing was initiated as eBay is in the process of preparing itself to spin off its PayPal unit into a separate publicly traded company. The spin-off, which was announced in September, is expected to complete by the second half of 2015.

In 2013, US-headquartered eBay had launched a global development centre at Bengaluru. This was the company's second development centre after the one in Chennai, which was started in 2007. At the time of launching the second centre, the company had said its existing office in Chennai employed close to 2,000 persons. The facilities house both eBay and PayPal's teams.

In September 2013, at the launch of the Bengaluru centre, which is across 150,000 square feet, the company had said it would expand its teams and hire 700 employees over three years, taking the total strength of the Bengaluru centre to 1,000.

The workforce re-alignment at the company would not have an impact on its hiring plans, Ram Narayanan, general manager, eBay Product Development Centre, told the Business Standard. He added "the company is on track to meet its hiring target".

Meanwhile, sources in the recruitment sector said resumes of eBay executives were flooding job portals as both the laid-off and the existing employees were looking for opportunities.