Bizongo, a packaging company with a focus on e-commerce, surprised everyone by laying off staff soon after announcing a $50 million funding round.
Confirming the development to media, a Bizongo spokesperson said, “We are driving sharper focus towards key business goals and in lieu of this, we have reallocated our people. Parting ways with people is never easy and these are difficult decisions. We are fully committed to extend support to affected employees with the best of our abilities.”
Bizongo fired 50 employees, or 15% of its workforce, according to ET, which broke the news of the development first.
After a three-year hiatus, this is the company’s second official layoff. In June 2020, it let go of about 160 employees. However, company-close sources claimed that there would be layoffs in the first half of 2023. It was impossible to confirm how many employees were affected.
The business made no comments regarding the prior layoffs.
Bizongo has so far raised $260 million, according to startup data intelligence platform TheKredible. The company’s valuation increased during the most recent round, going from $600 million to $980 million. After Zepto, the company might have become the second unicorn from India in 2023. It, however, opted to avoid the limelight.
The eight-year-old company Bizongo’s enterprise clients can choose from three key services: supply chain automation, digital vendor management, and supply chain financing. The platform caters to enterprise clients in the consumer staples, pharmaceuticals, fashion & lifestyle, and consumer discretionary industries. Steel and aluminum make up more than 50% of the raw materials that SME vendors on the company’s platform purchase.
With an operating loss of Rs 100 crore, Bizongo reported operating revenue of Rs 1,705 crore in FY22. Although the company has not yet submitted its audited financial report for FY23, its founder stated that losses remained constant. In the FY24 fiscal year ending in March 2024, it plans to report a profit before taxes.
In the first nine months, there were more than 15,000 layoffs in the Indian startup ecosystem. TheKredible’s data shows that only the third or previous quarter saw half of the layoffs.
