Software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based e-commerce platform, Dukaan has laid off 23 employees.
"This week, we had to let go of 23 employees from the team," founder Suumit Shah tweeted on Monday.
"While we had to lower the headcount on areas that we thought weren't very important at the moment, we are always hiring across tech and product," Shah further tweeted.
An emailed query pertaining to the total employee count or percentage of staff laid off did not elicit any response.
The decision comes on the back of the Bengaluru-based startup's focus narrowing towards direct-to-consumer brands (D2C) and enterprises from small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) previously.
"Since we shifted our whole focus from the small kirana/SMB segment to enterprises, D2C brands, there wasn't much of a role for live chat or call support, and on thetech front, we automated a lot of things," Shah wrote on Twitter.
Dukaan helps businesses and merchant with set up mobile-first online stores, reducing the need for programming skills.
Founded in June 2020 by Suumit Shah, Subhash Choudhary, Kaustub Pandey and Anurag Meena, the company allows customers to set up online stores. It primarily targeted e-commerce enablement of small businesses.
“We realised this whole e-commerce enablement game is all about 100,000-200,000 brands and not about millions of SMBs, because of multiple reasons such as poor margins, lack of tech understanding, and of course, demand generation skills,” Shah wrote.
In September 2021, the startup had raised $11 million in Pre-Series A round led by 640 Oxford Ventures, with participation from existing investors Snow Leopard Ventures, Lightspeed Partners, and Matrix Partners India. The startup is also backed by Venture Catalyst, HOF Capital, Old Well Ventures, LetsVenture, 9Unicorns along with prominent angels including Oyo’s Ritesh Agarwal and Nothing’s Carl Pei
The no-code platform had raised $6 million in seed round in October 2020. It competes with the likes of Khatabook. Dukaan last reported a revenue from operations of Rs 2.63 crore.
