After Unacademy, Meesho lays off 150 employees from its grocery arm

New Delhi: Meesho, a Bengaluru-based social commerce firm, has laid off about 150 employees from its grocery arm, which was rebranded to Meesho Superstore last week after it incorporated its food vertical into the primary app.

Recently, edtech startup Unacademy had laid off 600 employees due to non-performance and role redundancy.

"As we aim to enhance efficiencies in light of the integration, a small number of full-time posts and select third-party positions on six-month contracts at Meesho Superstore were appraised to remove redundancies with the core company," the Softbank-backed e-commerce startup wrote in a blog post.

"To help people affected by the restructuring, Meesho is providing severance compensation and outplacement services to assist them in finding new jobs outside the company. The layoffs have no impact on roles at Meesho's primary marketplace business, where we continue to acquire and grow personnel," the blog post concluded.

The supermarket operation should be fully integrated by the first week of May, according to the company.

"The company's 100 million+ Meesho users will now have access to over 87 million active product listings across 36+ categories on a single platform thanks to the integration."

In Karnataka, Meesho started a pilot programme to make online grocery buying more inexpensive for first-time users. It has expanded its grocery offering to six states in less than nine months: Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh.

Founded by IIT Delhi alumni Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, Meesho began as a social commerce platform in December 2015. This business model often has a three-sided marketplace: supplier, reseller, and end customer, with the reseller purchasing things from the supplier and reselling them via platforms like WhatsApp.

While Meesho began with a focus on social commerce, its direct sales share has been increasing, pitting it against competitors like Flipkart and Amazon. It now gets 75% of its revenue directly from clients who use its platform, with the remaining 25% coming from resellers.