Real estate services portal Housing.com is reportedly preparing to announce another round of layoffs in a bid to raise funds.
To trim escalating costs, the Mumbai-based firm has already reduced its headcount to about 1,800 from 2,500 in March, in a series of layoffs undertaken in the past few months.
The company now has to bring down its staff strength to 1,200 in order to receive further funding and therefore more layoffs may happen soon, Business Standard quoted sources close to the development as saying.
"It is difficult to put a number to the lay-offs. Housing hired indiscriminately in March and handed fat pay packets to whoever applied and ended up overstaffing. There was a bench in digital marketing once," said a senior executive.
Earlier this month, the company had cut 200 jobs amid growing pressure to meet the cost reduction targets set by its stakeholders. As part of restructuring its non-core operations, the company had shutdown commercial properties, short stays and land businesses in its previous restructuring move.
"The only restructuring the company is doing has already been communicated... The company has many offices across the country, and, as a result, the restructuring happens across a few days, but we are not doing any additional restructuring," Housing chief executive Jason Kothari said.
But sources said the company is set to announce another round of layoffs "sooner rather than later", as the cash being burnt by it is "too high".
While the company gave two or three-month severance pay to employees who were terminated, there is no clarity on the equity donated by its founder and former CEO Rahul Yadav to the staff in June, said sources.
"Whenever we asked about equity we were told it is being held in escrow or there are some legal issues around it," said the executive.
Yadav had 4.57% stake (worth Rs 150 crore to Rs 200 crore) in the company, which he gave away to Housing.com employees in May.
"Modalities of Yadav's shares are currently being worked on," Kothari said.
