Urban Ladder lays off 40% workforce in Q4 FY19: Report

June 2019 | Urban Ladder – Company fired 90 employees according to reports

Furniture retailer Urban Ladder laid off 40 percent of its workforce in the quarter-ended March, according to a report in The Hindu BusinessLine.

Even as the company has been trying to sustain operations, the leadership team has claimed that it is a couple of months away from turning EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) positive.

According to the report, the major reasons cited by the management for laying off employees was Urban Ladder’s inability to raise more funds and its struggle to turn profitable. Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

The layoffs, which happened at multiple levels, brought the company’s headcount to 700. This is the second time that the Ratan Tata-backed company has resorted to job cuts after 2016.

Ashish Goel, co-founder and CEO of Urban Ladder, told the newspaper that they had no other option and that they would have to shut down if they did not ask people to leave.

The company's goal is to deliver Rs 8-10 crore of EBITDA in this fiscal, Goel added.

The company doubled its revenue to Rs 204.7 crore in FY18 from what was Rs 101.9 crore in FY17. In its regulatory filling, the company reported a loss of Rs 117.3 crore in FY18 as against Rs 459.1 crore in FY17.