Financial technology company Lendingkart Technologies, which raised over Rs 319 crore in Series D round of funding this week, has reportedly laid off nearly 200 employees (30 percent of the workforce) in the Covid-19 times.
In an internal email, being circulated in the media, the company has been quoted as saying, “the ongoing period has had a debilitating effect on micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), where everything has come to a virtual standstill. NBFCs have been significantly impacted, with loan disbursements coming to a halt and moratorium impacting collections”.
The management and leadership team has also taken a pay cut.
An email sent to Lendingkart for a detailed statement went unanswered.
Lendingkart joins a growing list of startups and unicorns, like Zomato, Swiggy, Ola, Uber, Livspace and Sharechat, that have sacked employees in recent days.
Set up in 2014, Lendingkart has raised over Rs 1,050 crore of equity capital from investors.
“The outbreak of Covid-19 and the resultant slowdown have had a tremendous impact on the economy. During these unprecedented times, the MSMEs, backbone of the economy, have suffered significantly grappling with varied economic uncertainties,” Harshvardhan Lunia, co-founder & Managing Director of Lendingkart Technologies, said in a statement earlier this week.
Since its inception, Lendingkart Finance, a non-deposit taking NBFC arm of Lendingkart Group, has evaluated nearly half a million applications, disbursing more than 1,00,000 loans to over 89,000 MSMEs in 1,300 cities across 29 states and Union Territories.
Lendingkart, which has offices in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi NCR and Kolkata, has a service reach across the country.
