Online food-ordering startup TinyOwl to lay off over 100 employees more

Just two months after slashing 200 jobs, online food-ordering startup TinyOwl is at it again. It has decided to lay off 112 employees more in its second round of staff cuts in a bid to minimize expenses. This will bring down the company's total employee count from 1,000 to nearly 650 now.

The decision comes in the wake of a slowing fundraising market in India. Food startups are increasingly looking to cut costs in order to run a sustainable model.

In September, TinyOwl laid off employees, primarily from its sales and delivery teams. This time it will be largely from sales teams across 4 cities - Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune.

"It was a tough decision," cofounder and chief executive Harshvardhan Mandad told ET. "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."

The company said it is making processing of orders and delivery more "automated" in Mumbai and Bengaluru.

The company in February 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.

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