SUMMARY
- Bengaluru-based full stack retailer of used two-wheelers BeepKart has fired over 100 employees in the past few months.
- The company implemented the mass layoff exercise in stages with the first dismissal happening immediately after the fundraise in April 2024.
- This has impacted the company’s more than 20% staff population, with employees from marketing, technology, and products, and operations departments losing their jobs.
Bengaluru-based full stack retailer of used two-wheelers- BeepKart has fired over 100 employees in the past few months.
Some of the sources have reported that the company implemented the mass layoff exercise in stages with the first dismissal happening immediately after the fundraise in April this year.
This has impacted the company’s more than 20% staff population, with employees from marketing, technology, and products, and operations departments losing their jobs.
“A few senior roles were also impacted. The layoffs, however, came as a surprise as it happened right after the funding. The company likely made the move to focus on profitability,” shared an undisclosed source.
BeepKart is an online two-wheeler marketplace that enables buying and selling of used two-wheelers and was started by Hemir Doshi and Abhishek Saraf in 2020. Presently, the company is active in two cities- Bengaluru and Chennai.
The company has secured approximately $18.5 million to date and post-allotment, it is currently valued at around Rs 362 crore or $44 million. Additionally, in April, the company secured $6.5 million in an extended Series A round to scale up the business. Stellaris Venture Partners, Chiratae Ventures, Innoven Capital, and Vertex Ventures are some of the investors in the company.
CredR and Bike Bazaar could be considered to be the direct competitors of BeepKart. BeepKart was a pre-revenue stage firm until FY22 but it recorded decent growth during FY23. The company recorded Rs 21.90 crore revenue in FY23 while its losses were Rs 27.88 crore in the same period. The firm has not yet filed its FY24 annual report.
While it is not common to have layoffs immediately after a fundraise, it is a possible outcome as we saw when e-commerce packaging company Bizongo fired employees soon after it declared $50 million in funding. Likewise, Coffee chain firm Third Wave Coffee dismissed more than 100 employees months after it secured $35 million funding in its Series C round while Euler Motors laid-off 10% employees within six months of $60 million funding.
Source: Entrackr
