Snapdeal 2.0: 80% of employees may see pink slip

Ecommerce firm Snapdeal, after opting out of a merger with Flipkart, plans major layoffs for the second time this year, where 80 per cent of its workforce faces the axe, reports say.

A senior official of Snapdeal revealed to ANI on Monday that the company's management team has given verbal instructions to their department heads to prepare the list of the employees they would ask to leave.

According to ANI's sources, from last Thursday evening, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal have ''firmly instructed'' their business and technical heads to restructure their teams and begin the paperwork for their layoff.

According to another report, three Snapdeal employees told The Economic Times that they have been asked to leave. Each of them had been promised retention bonuses and asked to stay back when they had earlier planned to leave for other jobs. But on Monday morning, the three employees received emails asking them to leave.

"We were not given any notice," one of them said.

Another person aware of the Snapdeal management's plan told India Today, "Many of them were waiting around for the retention bonus, which would have come with an acquisition by Flipkart. Now there is no reason for them to be around. Over two to three months, we expect the (employee) numbers to come down to half. But in cases where there maybe a few layoffs, there is no reason why they wouldn't be paid three months' severance pay."

In July, Snapdeal had over 9,000 employees, but in a major layoff the company asked about 7,800 people to leave without any notice. The employees were given one month's salary and one month's severance package as opposed to three month's severance pay promised in February, according to Snapdeal employees ET spoke with.