Online ticket booking platform BookMyShow has recently downsized its employee count across offices in India and international markets. The downsizing exercise reportedly impacted about 18% of its workforce or 270 employees. The recent development at the company comes at a time when entertainment businesses like Cinemas, theater and cultural events have to come to a total halt due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In an email to his employees, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the company, Ashish Hemrajani said that they tried to do its best to offer financial support, continued health insurance cover and outplacement support to try and make the exercise slightly less painful and ease the burden for employees and their dependents.
“Today, we are at the stage where I have to share with you, the uncomfortable, unfortunate yet inevitable downsizing exercise that we have to take due to the unfavourable environment. None of these decisions reflect the quality of the work that any of these team members have put in,” Hemrajani wrote.
Employee support package includes medical insurance, gratuity and other benefits for all the impacted employees. A minimum salary of two months, irrespective of their tenure with the company will be given as severance to these employees. Medical insurance for impacted employees and their dependants has been provided till September 30. Also employees are given continued access to their internal mental health helpline programme, career transition support and certification highlighting skills of employees along with a dedicated team from HR that has been created to assist impacted employees through the entire process.
Hemrajani added that the teams that are staying back have voluntarily taken salary cuts ranging from 10% to 50% at the leadership level, given up their bonuses and all salary raises.
“The company has cut all other expenses and renegotiated with vendors, partners and landlords and after exhausting all other cost-saving measures, we have taken this decision as a last resort,” he said.
Founded in 1999, BookMyShow was valued at about $800mn during its last funding round in 2018 and has investors like SAIF Partners, TPG Growth and Accel Partners. But the pandemic brought troubles for the emerging consumer-internet company, with measures like travel ban, social distancing and movie theaters closed across the globe.
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