Southeast Asia’s main ride-hailing and food-delivery app says job losses ‘painful however needed’ step.
Singapore-based Seize, Southeast Asia’s main ride-hailing and food-delivery app, has introduced it should hearth 1,000 folks, or 11 % of its workforce.
Chief government Anthony Tan, who based the corporate in Malaysia in 2012, advised workers in a letter on Tuesday that the job cuts have been essential to handle prices and famous the speedy tempo of change within the trade and know-how.
“I wish to be clear that we’re not doing this as a shortcut to profitability,” Tan wrote within the letter.
He known as the “restructuring” a “painful however needed step”.
Seize launched in 2012 as a taxi-booking app in Malaysia earlier than changing into Southeast Asia’s greatest ride-hailing agency and increasing into monetary companies like digital funds. It operates in eight Southeast Asian international locations, together with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The layoffs observe comparable strikes by Indonesian tech agency GoTo, which additionally gives rides, e-commerce and monetary companies. It fired 12 % of its workforce in 2022 and sacked an additional 600 workers in March.
In Might, Seize reported a quarterly lack of $250m however mentioned income within the first quarter of this yr rose by 130.3 % to $525m in contrast with a yr in the past.
The corporate is on observe to interrupt even this yr even with out the layoffs, Tan mentioned.
Seize’s final job cuts have been in 2020, when 360 folks – representing about 5 % of the workforce on the time – have been laid off in response to the impression of the pandemic. The corporate had 11,934 workers on the finish of 2022, in keeping with its most up-to-date annual report.
In December, Tan advised workers the corporate was freezing most hiring and pay rises for senior managers, in addition to chopping journey and expense budgets.
Gran was listed in the USA in 2021, in a debut that valued the corporate at $39.6bn.
Its shares at the moment are buying and selling at about $3.40 every, in contrast with $13 after they started buying and selling.
