The curious case of Snapdeal's vanishing employees

Prominent e-commerce company Snapdeal is learnt to be in yet another round of staff cuts.
 
Over the past year, the estimate is that it has halved the employee strength. It is now learnt to have had discussion on cutting up to half of the remaining workforce.
 
According to internal data, as well as interviews and statements over the past year, Snapdeal’s employees have come down from 10,000 in February last year to a little less than 4,000. Over the next few months, it might want to bring this down to 2,000, sources said.
 

A Snapdeal spokesperson dismissed any talk of lay-offs as “speculative’’, saying, “on our journey towards profitability, it is imperative that we continue to drive efficiency in our business, which enables us to pass on the value to our customers and sellers’’. Also, that they’d continue to assess resource allocation. Employee numbers in the company have been a mystery for some time. Last February, Snapdeal gave the employee strength under Jasper Infotech, the parent company, as 10,000. And, then, as 8,000 soon after, as reports of lay-offs surfaced. At that point, the company said, “There have been no layoffs at Snapdeal. As part of the ongoing performance management and development programme, some team members at our Contact Centre have been offered a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP).’’ Many had agreed to undergo this but some had not and decided to quit, it had said a year before.

 
Till a few months earlier, Snapdeal used an internal communication system, ‘Unify’, which also housed the numbers working under co-founders Kunal Bahl and Sachin Bansal. According to July 2016 data, while the number of employees under Bansal was 3,501, Bahl headed a team of 1,035, taking the total to 4,536.
 
Bahl had reasoned in an interview that “a lot of people have been moved to Vulcan from our supply chain team…it has thousands of people and so has FreeCharge. It could be that.”
 
According to Unify data from around October, the number of employees at Snapdeal stood at 317 under Bahl and 3,835 under Bansal taking the total to 4,152, about 384 less in four months. This was the last such update on Unify.

 
With most of the company’s real estate now empty, it might look at relocating to a smaller office, from the current Gurgaon headquarters. The company has, however, denied shifting out of the current office.
 
However, Bahl’s recent e-mail to senior employees could tell another story. “Over a period of time, costs have a tendency to creep up on us and we need to keep an eye on any expense which doesn’t bring value. It is important to analyse and curtail expenses which are contributing neither to our efficiency nor to the customers’ or sellers’ experience. We encourage all of you to take tough decisions if you need to, in doing the right thing for our goal around profitability.”