TinyOwl to lay off another 100 staff as it scales back from four cities

BENGALURU/MUMBAI: Online food-ordering startup TinyOwl has decided to lay off another 112 employees—its second round of staff cuts in two months—as part of a restructuring aimed at reducing expenses, cofounder and chief executive Harshvardhan Mandad told ET.

In September, TinyOwl laid off about 200 employees. The latest staff cuts will be in marketing, sales and human resources (HR) teams in Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune.

Several food startups, facing a slowing fundraising market, are looking to cut expenses and focus on building sustainable businesses.

“It was a tough decision,” said Mandad. “Going forward, our operations will have to be more tech-oriented because margins are thin in the food business as compared to other online marketplaces.”

After the latest layoffs, TinyOwl expects its total employee count to drop from around 1,000 earlier this year to around 650.

The company said it is also piloting a new operational structure in Mumbai and Bengaluru, where it is making processing of orders and delivery more “automated.”

Existing investors Matrix Partners India and Sequoia Capital recently pumped in Rs 50 crore in TinyOwl as it works on streamlining operations.

The company in Feburary raised Rs 100 crore in a funding round led by Matrix Partners, with Sequoia Capital and Nexus Venture Partners participating. TinyOwl also counts Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal as investors.

TinyOwl was founded in 2014 by IIT-Bombay graduates Mandad, Gaurav Choudhary, Saurabh Goyal, Shikhar Paliwal and Tanuj Khandelwal.