Quikr axes 2,000 employees

According to media reports, Online classifieds platform Quikr has laid off around 1,500-2,000 people from various verticals in the last one and a half months. It reportedly laid off 1,200 employees in Bengaluru and 138 in Pune. The layoffs are an outcome of an alleged scam where employees faked business transactions to earn crores in commission

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Inc42 reports that the mass layoffs are an outcome of this very scam. The employee noted that numerous employees from the Quikr Realty and Quikr’s car and bikes teams had been involved in the in-hand payment fraud, depriving the company of revenue and causing a loss of INR 20 Cr.

A Quikr employee said “These layoffs have been taking place since November and were wrapped up December 20. The company has reduced the Bengaluru team to 1500 employees from a total of 2,700. The Pune team has also been cut short to 32 employees from the 170 employees, whereas similarly large layoffs were also seen in Delhi and Mumbai,”

Quikr’s investors include Tiger Global Management, Kinnevik, Warburg Pincus, Matrix Partners India, Norwest Venture Partners, NGP Capital, Steadview Capital, Omidyar Network.

Quikr unlocked a strategy of operating online-to-offline (O2O), transactional models. Used by over 30 million unique users a month, Quikr is present in 1,200 cities in India and operates several large classifieds businesses across multiple verticals such as cars, education, homes, jobs, and services.

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Quikr said its goods vertical, QuikrBazaar has over 30 outlets in non-metros and metros along with a few additional stores planned in states like Maharashtra, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh for more offline stores sometime in 2020.

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