Indonesia’s largest Internet company, GoTo, is laying off 1,300 employees or 12 per cent of its workforce in an effort to cut costs and improve finances, reported TechCrunch. In an email, to the staff on Friday company’s CEO Andre Soelistyo said, “It pains me to say that, as a result of our organisational review, we have to part ways with some of you.”
“Achieving financial independence more quickly has a profound cost for us, because when we take a hard look at how we fundamentally need to change (business focus and ways of working), it also includes you, the people who are the backbone of this company,” he added.
The report comes as many other global tech companies have also been trimming their workforce amid concerns about an economic slowdown.
Meta said last week it would lay off about 13 per cent of its workforce. Elon Musk’s Twitter has slashed the company's workforce in half. Layoffs in Amazon are expected to continue till last year.
Soelistyo described the situation to the staff, "Uncertainties will linger for a while, and there is not much that we can do to change that.” he wrote. “I know you are filled with many emotions right now, pain, anger, sadness, and most of all, grief. I feel the same way.”
A GoTo spokesperson told TechCrunch that these layoffs are an attempt to "accelerate its progress towards becoming a truly sustainable and financially independent business, centered on its core offerings of on-demand, e-commerce, and financial technology services."
“To accelerate further, since the beginning of the year, the company has been implementing a comprehensive end-to-end cost optimisation exercise that involves aligning operating models, unifying processes, consolidating vendors, renegotiating contracts for various cost items and finding structural efficiencies. By the end of Q2, approximately Rp800 billion ($51 million) in structural cost savings had been achieved in areas such as technology, marketing and outsourcing,” the spokesperson added.