Valar Ventures-backed buy-now-pay-later platform Simpl has laid off nearly 100 employees across verticals as part of cost-cutting measures, people aware of the development told VCCircle.
Simpl, which had nearly 650 employees before the layoffs, said that the efforts will enable it to accelerate its journey towards profitability and build a fiscally prudent organisation.
“With the continued efforts around improving business efficiencies, we are expecting to be profitable by mid-2025,” said Ashish Kulshrestha, head of corporate communications, Simpl.
“We have laid out a comprehensive growth plan while having a razor-sharp focus on profitability in order to advance our mission of enabling e-commerce and direct-to-customer merchants,” added Kulshrestha.
Bengaluru-based Simpl is providing a severance package of two months of salary along with 15 days of salary for every year spent at the company to all the impacted employees. It claims to be also offering extended medical insurance and outplacement services.
Simpl was founded in 2016 by Nitya Sharma and Chaitra Chidanand. It provides customers with a credit line to make online purchases. It provides them with a few days’ window to repay the bill without any additional charges.
The startup claims to have tie-ups with more than 26,000 online stores where users can purchase goods and services by paying via Simpl. These include Zomato, BookMyShow, Goibibo, redBud, and Zepto, among others.
The company last raised $40 million as a part of its Series B round, led by Valar Ventures and IA Ventures, in December 2021. LFH Ventures also participated in the funding round.
In the financial year through March 2023, Simpl, which is operated by One Sigma Technologies Pvt. Ltd, posted revenue of Rs 87.4 crore, up from Rs 31.6 crore the year before, as per VCCEdge, the data intelligence platform of VCCircle. Its net loss surged to Rs 356.7 crore from a net loss of Rs 144.3 crore.