Social Commerce unicorn DealShare has pulled the plug on its business-to-business (B2B) operations to focus on its business-to-consumer offering, laying off several employees in the process.
The startup allowed kirana stores to order directly through its B2B unit, while its B2C arm offers grocery, essentials and home care to customers through its apps.
“We took a conscious decision to focus on B2C business at this point to stay relevant to our consumers in the market. We have taken decisions of realigning our budgets, reorganising teams and locations,” a DealShare spokesperson said in a statement.
The development comes less than three months after its co-founder Vineet Rao stepped down from his role as chief-executive officer. The company has been pivoting to an online plus offline model. The move comes as the company shifts its headquarters to Gurugram from Jaipur, and focuses on a few key markets.
“We took some action in this direction by moving our operations to Gurugram and consolidating our business to focus on geographies of Jaipur, Delhi-NCR, Lucknow and Kolkata with clear priorities on creating an online plus offline model,” the spokesperson added.
“Our immediate priorities will be to quickly organise the teams towards execution, complete the non-Tech teams transition to Gurgaon, prioritise key deliverables and swing into action,” the statement said.
While DealShare did not specify the number of employees who will be impacted, but a report from Moneycontrol said about 130 will be impacted. This is the second round of layoffs in DealShare, coming about eight months after its first let go of about 100 employees in January, or around 6% of its then over 1,500 workforce as a part of its “business restructuring plan” amid a pressure to control burn.
“The company will do everything in our capacity to support them through this transition both financially and leveraging our networks to provide for a soft landing,” it said.
The Tiger Global-backed firm, founded in 2018 by Rao, Sourjyendu Medda, Sankar Bora and Rajat Shikhar, offers grocery, essentials and home care products mostly in tier II cities and beyond through its app. The company targets middle- and lower-income groups through a community group buying model.
With the funding crunch and slowed growth, DealShare has expanded its offline presence too as it looks to show profits to its investors. The company had reported a loss of Rs 431 crore in the financial year ended 2022, over sales of Rs 1,933 crore, according to data accessed by VCCEdge.
It raised close to $130 million as a part of its Series E funding round from Tiger Global Management, Alpha Wave Global (managed by Falcon Edge Capital) and others, in January last year.
The round came about six months after its raised $144 million in July 2021 from Tiger Global, WestBridge Capital, Alpha Wave Incubation, along with partners of DST Global, Matrix partners and Alteria Capital.
