Bounce goes for second round of layoffs

Bengaluru: Bounce has laid off 40-60% of staff, as the demand for shared mobility remains subdued 11 months after initial lockdowns to curb the spread of Covid-19 pandemic.This is the second major round of layoffs at Wickedride Adventure Services, which operates the on-demand two-wheeler rental service, since the coronavirus outbreak.The company has reduced headcount to 200 people, according to people privy to the matter. Bounce had laid off 130 workers, or 22% of its workforce of about 600 employees, in June last year. The most recent round is estimated to have affected a further 200-odd employees at all levels, multiple people told ET. The company has offered three months of severance pay, with medical benefits till the end of the year, employees who have been asked to go said.Bounce said it had engaged in “rationalisation” of its workforce, in line with its long-term goals. “2020 has affected mobility more than any sector,” Vivekananda Hallekere, co-founder and chief executive of Bounce, said in response to queries emailed by ET. “During 2019 we wanted to go after platform play and we had hired accordingly to go after multiple mobility solutions. Given how 2020 has been, we have decided to focus on EV two-wheeler mobility and double down on our efforts around electrification. Accordingly, we have made some decisions which has affected a few employees at Bounce."A top executive at Bounce said the company still has around $70 million in cash from its previous fundraise and will utilise that capital to grow the EV business.“They (Bounce) are looking to recover the business with the minimal amount of staff required. Everyone I call seems to be on the same boat,” said one affected employee. “But the HR is diligently calling everyone and asking which companies they’d prefer working at and are forwarding CVs to them.”ET spoke to three other employees who lost their jobs. One person said a list of affected employees was being drafted for sharing with other potential recruiters, which might provide an estimate on the number of employees affected. ET was unable to access any such list of employees that had been recently laid off.“I was informed I was being laid off with three months of severance pay,” said another person. “I guess I understand why they did it. The business is nowhere close to recovery and it doesn’t seem that rides will recover to previous (pre-pandemic) levels anytime soon.”Hallekere said the company was working with employees to place them in other organisations. “The world knows the quality of team Bounce and we are very sure that all of them will find great homes,” he said.Bounce, which has over the course of the last few months sold most of its petrol-powered scooters, is now looking at rolling out a 100% electric vehicles fleet. This includes an electric scooter developed in-house which will become available on the platform in the next 7-10 days, the company said.Sources said Bounce had shuttered operations in all cities except Bengaluru, where it is largely focusing on EVs that have far lower running costs than petrol-powered vehicles. The total number of daily rides is, however, at around 20,000, compared to around 130,000-140,000 a day prior to the pandemic.Wickedride Adventure Services, which started off as a rental service for high-end motorcycles in 2014, pivoted to a bicycle and then scooter sharing service—branded Metro Bikes—in 2016. In 2018, the company unveiled its model for dock-less scooter sharing and rebranded to Bounce.This caught the attention of several big-ticket investors, such as Sequoia Capital, B Capital, Accel Partners India, Chiratae Ventures, Omidyar Network, Qualcomm Ventures, which pumped in Rs 1,384.2 crore (about $190 million) into the company, according to business intelligence platform Paper.vc.Bounce utilised the capital to bring tens of thousands of two-wheelers onto the roads. Just before the pandemic struck, in January 2020, Bounce announced a $105 million funding round led by Accel and B Capital Group, valuing the company at Rs 3,369.6 crore (or $465 million at today’s exchange rates), according to Paper.vc’s estimates.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/37zoE4j
via IFTTT