Inmobi, India's First Unicorn, Lays Off 50-70 Employees On Performance Grounds: Report

The Inmobi group has a total headcount of 2,600 and it got the first unicorn status in 2011

SoftBank-backed Inmobi, India’s first unicorn, has laid off 50-70 employees, citing performance metrics, Business Standard reported quoting a source privy to the development. The employees impacted are from Inmobi and the firm’s lock screen-based content provider Glance, the report mentioned.

This comes even as the company announced that it will skip increments for CY23 and also undertake recruitment only when required, according to Business Standard.

The Inmobi group has a total headcount of 2,600. It got the first unicorn status in 2011.

While responding to queries, the company said, “InMobi / Glance is in the market actively hiring talent for the ambitious plans that we have. We also evaluate the performance of our existing talent on an annual basis and make decisions based on it. This is business as usual for us and part of our annual process. This year is no different.”

Meanwhile, the company is planning to launch Glance in the US by February. Last year, this service was launched in Japan.

Its second business, Glance became a unicorn in 2020 when it raised $145 million from Google and Mithril Capital. The company raised $200 million in Series D financing last year in July from Reliance-owned Jio Platform.

Layoffs in start-ups in India have reached a new high as companies look at controlling costs and bringing efficiency into day-to-day operations.

Recently, Swiggy said it will lay off 380 employees of its workforce of 6,000 as part of a restructuring exercise. This is amid the funding winter in the Indian start-up ecosystem.

Similarly, Ola started its lay off process for 200 employees at the beginning of this year.

Meanwhile, after Meta, Twitter and Amazon, Google's parent company Alphabet has also announced its plans to cut roughly 12,000 jobs. The tech behemoth is planning to reduce its staff by 6 per cent. This will be the company’s biggest-ever round of layoffs amid economic slowdown. The job cuts across Alphabet will impact employees globally and across the entire company, company CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in an email on Friday.