Indian social networking app Sharechat has recently laid off about 101 employees or 25% of its staff as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic impacts ad revenues. The development was first reported by The Economic Times.
According to an internal mail sent to employees by company Chief Executive Officer Ankush Sachdeva, the advertisement market remains unpredictable this year and the company is streamlining itself to these new expectations.
“We have to focus on our core product and feed recommendation is driven growth levers while scaling back on the others. We need to go back to our fundamentals in terms of only picking bets that move the needle for growth,” said Sachdeva in the email.
Talking about assistance to these employees, the CEO said that the impacted employees will have the option of taking a garden leave of two months or half the salary for next four months. The employees are also assured of one month’s ex-gratia for every year that they have worked with the company.
In times of such an unprecedented health crisis, ShareChat will also continue to provide health insurance policy until the end of the year. For ESOP holders, the company will extend the timeline for the stocks employees own till the end of the year.
ShareChat has been in the news recently for a lot of things. The Twitter-backed company had launched a fantasy sports gaming platform Jeet11 and acquired social commerce platform Elanic to tap into the market. Also, it is worth noting that the company had started monetizing the platform only late last year.
ShareChat had also been caught up in legal troubles with Indian music label T-series regarding copyright issues. T-Series’ partner, Lahari Recording Company had filed a police complaint in March month at a Bengaluru police station, alleging that ShareChat allows its users to download copyrighted music, causing a financial loss to the music label.
HrNxt.com Newsdesk has researchers and writers with an excellent domain knowledge about the talent ecosystem, and the business environment. The team keeps a tab on the latest happenings in the ecosystem to bring most relevant news and insights for our readers. You can connect with our newsdesk at newsdesk@hrnxt.com.