After Zomato, Swiggy announces 1100 layoff as Covid-19 derails Cloud kitchens

Food delivery platform Swiggy has announced to lay off 1,100 employees spanning across grades and functions in the cities and head office over the next few days as Covid-19 continues to hurt its business.

“All impacted employees will receive at least three months of salary, irrespective of their notice period or tenure,” said Sriharsha Majety, Co-founder and CEO, Swiggy, to its employees during a virtual town hall meeting.

"For every year they have spent with us, we will be offering an extra month of ex-gratia in addition to their notice period pay, working out to between 3-8 months of salary depending on the tenure," added Majety by pointing that if someone's notice period is three months and they've spent five years with the company, they will get eight months of salary. The company will inform those being laid off in one-to-one video calls.

Swiggy said it is also going to scale down or shut down adjacent businesses that are either going to be highly volatile or will not be highly relevant for the next 18 months.

"The biggest impact here is on the Cloud kitchens business, with many unknowns about volumes through the year. Since the onset of Covid-19, we have already begun the process of shutting down our kitchen facilities temporarily or permanently, depending on their outlook and profitability profile," Majety told the employees.

"We are already operating at significantly lower levels on our staffing and physical infra than our earlier footprint, and will continue to optimize before we get more clarity on order volumes for food delivery".