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The Indian e-commerce giant <keyword id="541988" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="SnapDeal">Snapdeal</keyword> has issued a notice to its consumer service department, asking 200 members to either shape up or ship out. 
 
Owing to the almost impossible demands of the company's performance improvement plan, most employees are opting for the second option, said several people aware of the matter. 
 
"The process is still on and nearly 70 have been called in till now (Wednesday)," one of the 100 employees summoned by the HR department told ET. 
 
In December last year, 150 employees were asked to quit the company. 
 
"Last trimester, which ended in November, employees were asked to leave in December. This time, before the end of this trimester, which is March, they are asking us to leave," said one person. "In April 2015, we had close to 1,000 employees. Now we have around 500, of which 200 employees are being asked to leave." 
 
The options given to employees are choosing between resigning or going on the performance plan, for which they would be given a month's time to meet targets, failing which they will be terminated. 
 
However, the company denied that it was sacking majority of its teams. 
 
"There have been no firings or layoffs at Snapdeal," a spokesperson said in response to ET’s query. "Some employees at our Contact Centre, who were not meeting the required performance parameters have been offered a Performance Improvement Plan, which offers such employees 30 days to improve their performance. Some of the employees have chosen not to go through the Performance Improvement Plan and have instead opted to exit. In deference to their wishes, Snapdeal has accepted their resignations. The PIP process is expected to 
cover about 200 team members." 
 
<a href="http://cdn2.thegrindstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/shutterstock_66384196.jpg">Image source</a>

Snapdeal asks 200 employees to shape up or ship out; employees choosing latter over ‘impossible’ targets

A performance improvement plan for 200 employees in February this year followed by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Anand-Chandrasekaran-looking-to-launch-own-startup-quits-Snapdeal/articleshow/52419666.cms">a string of resignations by top executives</a> recently - the sudden unrest brewing inside <keyword id="541988" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="SnapDeal">Snapdeal</keyword> certainly shows not all is well within the company. 
 
Further validating this, credible sources from within Snapdeal have now confirmed to Business Insider that it is likely to show the door to several of its employees soon. The news has spread within the nooks and corners inside the company, and several employees who we got in touch with, say they are not happy with the way things have been unfolding in the past few months. 
 
Sources tell us that a layoff plan is certain, but it's still not clear as to how many employees could be asked to leave and by when. 
 
However, unlike February when <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/5-things-that-went-wrong-with-Flipkart-and-Snapdeal/articleshow/52122723.cms">Snapdeal</a> put 200 employees on a performance improvement plan which forced several to quit, but the company washed its hands off saying they didn't sack anyone, sources say, this time around there will be no cover for them to take shield under because Snapdeal is looking at undertaking massive layoffs any time this year. 
 Even as several reasons are being speculated for mulling to take this extreme step, as per sources, the Gurgaon-based company reportedly is wanting to cut costs, and therefore cracking the whip on its poor performers. It’s also being said that it is finding itself under tremendous pressure to keep its lead in the online marketplace segment where it's facing stiff competition from its rivals <keyword id="18635" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Amazon">Amazon</keyword> and Flipkart India. 
 
Meanwhile a spokesperson from Snapdeal said:“There have been no layoffs. Snapdeal believes in capital efficient, impactful growth and is engaged in building long term capabilities that create substantial differentiation. With this focus, Snapdeal has built a vibrant and meritocratic organization run by highly committed teams aligned with its objective to build India’s most reliable and frictionless commerce ecosystem. We continue to hire across levels and functions as per our talent requirements and we are currently in the process of adding 350 members to our engineering and product teams.” 
 
(Image: Thinkstock)

Snapdeal to lay-off employees
soon, confirms company sources

India’s largest online marketplace <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=flipkart&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Flipkart</a> is acting tough on its underperforming employees and has asked them to put in their papers, else they will be terminated and given severance pay. 
 This decision by <keyword id="6354742" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Flipkart">Flipkart</keyword>, which has nearly 30,000 <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=employees&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">employees</a>, is likely to affect 700 to 1,000 staff. 
 
"The cleanup is a part of the process of making Flipkart a lean organisation," ET quoted one of the sources as saying. 
 
Apparently, this is not the first time Flipkart has come down heavily on its non-performing employees. 
 
Flipkart, in a statement, said “In situations where employees do not make progress despite being put on a performance improvement plan, they are encouraged to seek opportunities outside the company where their skills can be better utilised. This is a fairly common practice across various industries- especially in high performing internet organisations.” 
 
Not only Flipkart, even <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=snapdeal&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Snapdeal</a> is looking to do away with non-performing employees and recently as many as 200 people were asked to buckle up or move out. 
 
ET quoted a former Flipkart employee saying how roles and expectations kept changing. 
 
"I chose to resign and sent a formal mail to my manager, which was immediately accepted. While the company has been patient with its employees over the last four years, this time it was not," this person told ET. He had worked for three years in the company in several roles, with the last one in the marketplace division. 
 
"Managers should have good facts and data substantiating why a particular person is a non-performer, and base his decision on factual data. There is also a lot of referencing that happens in this space and an organisation should be helping them in that regard as well," Harish Kumar, Managing Partner at Wenger &amp; Watson, told ET. 
 
(Image: Thinkstock)

Flipkart may handover pink slips to nearly 700 employees

<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=snapdeal&amp;sortorder=effectivedate" data-type="tilCustomLink">Snapdeal’s</a> three major investors- <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=softbank&amp;sortorder=effectivedate" data-type="tilCustomLink">SoftBank</a>, Nexus Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital- have already agreed for e-commerce’s sale out to<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=flipkart&amp;sortorder=effectivedate" data-type="tilCustomLink"> Flipkart</a>. But, apart from these, a nod from <keyword id="6419840" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Azim-Premji">Azim Premji</keyword> and <keyword id="6360722" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="ratan-tata">Ratan Tata</keyword> is also required as they too have stakes in <keyword id="541988" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="SnapDeal">Snapdeal</keyword>. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-16/flipkart-pact-for-snapdeal-said-to-need-premji-tata-approvals">Bloomberg</a> reported, as per the contract, Snapdeal needs backing from the two of India's most powerful businessmen. Nod from Premji, Tata and other several important investors is still awaited. “If due diligence goes smoothly, a term sheet specifying cash and stock for each shareholder will follow and a final agreement could be signed by mid- to late June,” Bloomberg quoted sources as saying. When the sale happens, Snapdeal's Kunal Bahl and <keyword id="396598" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Rohit-Bansal">Rohit Bansal</keyword> will together receive about $30 million with a similar sum to be set aside for Snapdeal's nearly 2,000 employees. <keyword id="1397792" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kalaari-Capital">Kalaari Capital</keyword>, one of the two early investors in the startup, is to get $30 million, while Nexus will receive twice that amount for its larger stake, they said. Kalaari's managing director <keyword id="1397790" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Vani-Kola">Vani Kola</keyword>, an early investor in Snapdeal, told Bloomberg that she has resigned from the startup's board. "I was done with what I needed to do,” Kola said, adding that she saw no conflict of interest. Meanwhile, this merger will give a boost to <keyword id="6354742" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Flipkart">Flipkart</keyword>’s battle against <keyword id="18635" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Amazon">Amazon</keyword>, which is pumping in money in its Indian arm to grab a significant share in the market. Flipkart raised $1.4 billion from Tencent Holdings Ltd., Microsoft Corp. and EBay Inc, taking its valuation at $11.6 billion. "This is a landmark deal for Flipkart and for India,” the company's co-founders <keyword id="225032" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sachin-Bansal">Sachin Bansal</keyword> and <keyword id="6364080" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Binny-Bansal">Binny Bansal</keyword> said in a statement. "This deal reaffirms our resolve to hasten the transformation of commerce in India through technology.

Azim Premji, Ratan Tata’s nod also important for Flipkart-Snapdeal merger

Several top executives of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=startups&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Indian startups</a> are calling it quits to launch their own companies and the focus of the many of them is one-making profit in short time. 
 
Over 15 top executives resigned from <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=flipkart&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Flipkart</a>, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=snapdeal&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Snapdeal</a>, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=ola&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Ola</a>, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=zomato&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Zomato</a> and Paytm within almost one year and launched their own startups and their success story is quite impressive too. 
 
Many of them either grew by leaps or bounds or sold off their businesses, raking in money. 
 
Experts say the top line now wants to make more moolah and thereby are building more cash making models. 
 Bhuvan Gupta, who was with <keyword id="541988" type="COMPANY" weightage="40" keywordseo="SnapDeal">Snapdeal</keyword> as VP engineering, cofounded an online marketplace-OfBusiness. 
 
Now, his startup has over 100 employees and is doing business across 10 states currently. 
 
"People may call ecommerce 'a cash burn business', but we're already cash positive. I always wanted to do a startup and there's always an age and time when you can take such risk," Gupta told ET. 
 
Meanwhile, the risk taking appetite has also gone up owing to greater aspirations of individuals, ideological differences with the unicorns, more money-oriented approach and a well-connected network. 
 Even Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori of <keyword id="6354742" type="COMPANY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Flipkart">Flipkart</keyword> had left the e-commerce player to launch a healthcare and fitness startup with $5 million of their own cash. 
 <keyword id="6354720" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ola">Ola</keyword>’s former heads Rushil Goel and Sunit Singh quit coming up with their own design startup. 
 "I wanted to start a business that is economically viable and has a social objective. Priced at around Rs 10,000 apiece, the product is being lapped up by schools, hotels and hospitals. The market is very big. Around 13 Indian cities feature in the list of most polluted places in the world. There are states (in India) with just one air quality monitor," Namita Gupta, who left <keyword id="830092" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Zomato">Zomato</keyword> to launch Airveda, told ET. 
 
(Image: Thinkstock)

These top executives quit Flipkart, Snapdeal, Ola with only one aim in mind

In 2006, two freshmen from IIT-Delhi gathered enough spunk to knock at the door of Kalyanaraman Srinivasan, Amazon’s <keyword id="2463621" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="global-technology-head">global technology head</keyword> for retail, who was in India to set up a development center at Chennai and a regular at the Bangalore office of the global ecommerce biggie. The duo requested fifteen minutes of ‘we-time’ as they bubbled over a few ideas they considered path-breaking. They wanted to know which one they should focus on. “I took 1.5 seconds and said if they really wanted to be entrepreneurs, they must replicate Amazon in India and be patient about it,” says Srinivasan, in a southern accent cradling a Midwestern twang. The duo turned out to be Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal who founded Indian ecommerce giant Flipkart the very next year, recently raising a billion dollars from investors to take on Amazon’s Indian foray. 
 Srinivasan’s advice bode well for the youngsters and made them very rich indeed but the operative word was “patient”. Despite zero signs of profitability in the ecommerce eddies, Srinivasan remains positive. After all, more than 20% of the GDP of the world comes from emerging markets with barely 3% of capital investment therein. In other words, there are not many tradable liquid securities out here, he reasons, adding that companies like Flipkart, Snapdeal and <keyword id="761157" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Infibeam">Infibeam</keyword>, where he has personally invested, will raise the tide. 
 
“The rising tide will raise all the boats first and every company will get irrational valuations but those who focus on customer experience in the long term, will stay there and go higher, and those who don’t, will fall off,” says Srinivasan. As a precursor, he points to the dotcom boom in the US in 1999-2000. “Trillions of dollars went into valuations there but the customer experience only got better…so the irrationality of valuations is relative,” he points out, observing the Indian ecommerce market potential to be in the $100-200 range and with only $6 billion active market, excluding train and flight tickets, Flipkart’s valuation of $5 billion makes perfect sense. 
 Today, the 44-year-old Kalyanaraman Srinivasan is Chief Operating Officer, <keyword id="384914" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Groupon">Groupon</keyword>, a portmanteau for group coupon, and at one time, the fastest growing company in the world that grew from $1 million in seed money to $1 billion in two years. On a whistlestop tour covering Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and India, he met up with CD in the Delhi office of Groupon, housed in a rundown commercial complex in the southern part of the capital city. That’s where, over cuppa and crackers, he deconstructs the journey of a 15-year-old from poverty to power, politics at the workplace, lessons from Sam Walton, problem-solving from Amazon to startups, and how somewhere in between, he came to be known as Kal Raman. 
 
Education is salvation 
 
Born and raised in Mannarkoil in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district, down south of Chennai, Raman’s father, a tehsildar, passed away when he was all of 15. The family of four siblings struggled through the odds on his mother’s monthly pension of Rs 420. She was, however, uncompromising on her children’s education. That explains how liberally Raman uses this phrase—“Education is salvation.” 
 
After high school, Raman got through both medical and engineering college. While the medical college stood in his district, he opted for engineering in Chennai where he knew nobody. “I wanted to see how far I can fly,” he reminisces. Till today, Raman has a knack of making the tougher choice. It’s as if he’s conditioned that way. “The longer it takes to get something, the longer it stays with you….most of the things that look easy, are not good in the long term,” he says. 
 
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Not quite okay, Tata 
 
Raman’s first job was in Mumbai with Tata Consulting Engineers, where he landed up in slippers on his first day at work, sending his boss into a fit of rage. Upon hearing his story, he was not only given money to buy shoes but also fixed up at his friend’s Mumbai residence. Within a month, his boss sent him to Bangalore where he computerized the entire office administration. Thus started Raman’s steady rise in the world of information technology, and he did a lot of learning on his own, including ‘C’ programming. Just as he was about to get confirmed, he gave in his resignation since he signed up with TCS at Chennai. As a code jock, he ended up in Edinburgh servicing the Scottish Equitable Insurance Company and that’s where the first signs of friction with his boss became evident. 
 
As Raman deep-dove into the world of insurance, he figured the mathematical model of the company was completely flawed—if the company had more than 15% reimbursement, the resultant number would be a big negative, while the marketing documents of the company said that people would get 23% redemption. He tried explaining it to his boss but got cold shouldered. 
 
Raman would come in late and work well into the night. Being the last to leave, he was noticed by someone by the name Chris, who asked him why he stayed up so late despite being a programmer from an outsourced company. Upon being told of a questionable business model, Chris got curious and stayed up with Raman till 2 am one morning. A few days later, as Raman came in to work, his boss was pacing up anddown the room and glanced at him menacingly. He said that the European general manager of TCS had been called by the company and they were all going to see the management and that it concerned him. “If I were you, I would have packed my bags for India,” the boss said. Eventually, the trio entered a room with suits and at the head of the table, Chris sat in bespoke CEO attire. Before a word was uttered, Raman’s boss started making excuses and virtually disowned him, labeling him as a rotten apple in the TCS pantheon of “good and loyal workers”. That’s when Chris got up and silenced him, explaining why TCS needed to hire more people like Raman. “What my CPO and CIO couldn’t solve, a 22-yearold has done, and I thought it to be pertinent to acknowledge it in front of his bosses,” he said. 
 
The American Dream 
 For Raman, there was no looking back. With the help of Chris, he applied to companies in the US and got through <keyword id="46675" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Wal-Mart">Wal-Mart</keyword>, where he rose to become the giant retailer’s technology director within a year. In fact, he admittedly got promoted 18 times that year from the lowest employee to the top rung, catching the eye of Wal-Mart promoters Sam and Rob Walton. He also picked up the invaluable lessons of long-term planning and customer-centricity from Sam Walton, the father of modern retail. That’s where Raman learnt business execution under his mentor, Doyle Graham, who again passed away at 45, exactly the age his father had died. Orphaned twice, Raman had no will to forge on. He hung around for six months before signing up with Blockbuster, the biggest DVD rental company then and as he predicted its doom, which eventually paved the way for newbies like Netflix, he started out afresh as CEO of drugstore.com. At Drugstore, he had an enviable board of directors, which included among others, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Bill Gates’ wife and philanthropist Melissa Gates, Starbucks’ Howard Schultz and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. 
 
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He ran Drugstore through the tumultuous 9/11 years as corporate America took a beating and share prices tumbled. When his recovery plan was rejected by the board, Raman knew it was time. However, Bezos sought him out and wanted him to go to Seattle to take a shot at some of the problems at Amazon. Raman, of course, chose the toughest one to crack—the non-media businesses were growing faster than media and Amazon was losing $200 million worth of free cash flow back then. He identified the problem and automated the entire retail infrastructure to solve it at one go. At that juncture, there were 6,000 people working at Amazon and he had 3,000 under him. Mission accomplished, Raman moved on to start his own venture Global Scholar with venture capitalist Michael Milken until selling out in 2010 and signing up as COO of Groupon in May 2012. “Now I joined Groupon when everyone wrote the company off and I love being the underdog,” he says. 
 
Galvanizing Groupon 
 
In 2012, Groupon’s international business was crumbling and it was left to Raman to steady the ship. Today, along with the domestic US business, the international division is in the black. “We are building a category, we are not building a company…. what Groupon is now, Amazon was in 2001,” he says. 
 
As he pumps in adrenaline to the business, Raman has a roadmap. He’s applying all that he learnt at Wal-Mart, keeping the merchant community engaged and customers happy by offering the lowest prices and an efficient delivery mechanism. Will he be able to pull it off? “We’re more worried about the long term and so we’re trying to get more efficient by passing off the savings to our merchants and customers so that they become more loyal to Groupon and check our website first before they go for any other transactions….we have about 1,600 people in technology to do that out of 12,000 worldwide,” he says. At $2.5 billion revenue and with zero debt, Raman’s optimism is well-founded. And while valuations like $8 billion scorch the terrace, he maintains a straight face and waits for the tide to raise the boats. What then, after he steers Groupon to the safe shores of supra-growth and profitability? “I’ll do something very big in education in India, with or without Groupon,” he says.

You Searched For "snapdeal employees resign" and got 6 results

Snapdeal asks 200 employees to shape up or ship out; employees choosing latter over ‘impossible’ targets

BI India Bureau

Snapdeal to lay-off employees soon, confirms company sources

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Flipkart may handover pink slips to nearly 700 employees

BI India Bureau

Azim Premji, Ratan Tata’s nod also important for Flipkart-Snapdeal merger

BI India Bureau

These top executives quit Flipkart, Snapdeal, Ola with only one aim in mind

BI India Bureau

Meet Kal Raman, Groupon COO & Mentor To Flipkart’s Bansals

Moinak Mitra

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