Flipkart is offering employees who have failed to meet professional expectations the choice to either resign or be sent off with severance pay, according to three people directly aware of the development at India's largest online retailer said a report in The Economic Times.
The decision is expected to impact 700 to 1,000 staff, two of the sources, who are part of the senior management team at the Bengalurubased company, said. "The cleanup is a part of the process of making Flipkart a lean organisation," said one of the people cited above.
The move, while not unique to Flipkart, is reflective of the challenging times for the online retail industry, as well as the company, which is attempting to find a balance between saving costs and chasing growth. While the absolute numbers look large, Flipkart has about 30,000 employees, which means the decision affects some 2.33.3% of the workforce.
What is raising eyebrows is also the fact that such occurrences are not common at Flipkart, which has expanded rapidly in recent years and tended to take a benign view of those at the bottom of the performance hierarchy. Now, however, things have changed as chief executive Binny Bansal strives to maintain the market leadership of India's most valuable startup while putting the company on a path to profitability.
Flipkart came in for some criticism earlier this year after it deferred the joining dates for campus recruits from the Indian Institutes of Management.
