Better.com employees leaving in 'droves' after Vishal Garg returns as CEO: report

Better.com CEO Vishal Garg had apologised for his manner of handling layoffs. (Image credit: LinkedIn)

Employees of US-headquartered mortgage company Better.com are leaving the company in “droves” after Vishal Garg returned as their CEO over a month after he laid off 900 employees in a single Zoom call, TechCrunch reported.

The company’s board announced Garg’s return in an e-mail to employees earlier this month.

Indian-origin Vishal Garg, who founded Better.com in 2016, had apologised for his manner of handling layoffs at the company after a video of him firing 900 people via a Zoom call went viral on social media in December 2021. Chief Financial Officer Kevin Ryan was managing the day-to-day decisions of the company and reporting to the board, Vice reported, citing the email.

The CEO, who was widely criticised for the ‘Zoomgate’, had cited the market performance and productivity as reasons behind the decision to lay off employees in the United States and India.

"If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off," Garg told the staff during the Zoom video call. "Your employment here is terminated effective immediately." This is the second round of lay-offs Garg has undertaken, he said.

Better.com had said in May 2021 it would go public through a merger with blank-check firm Aurora Acquisition Corp, in a deal that valued it at $7.7 billion.

Garg is also the founding partner of One Zero Capital, an investment holding company. At 21, the New York University graduate dropped out of the investment banking analyst program at Morgan Stanley and started private student lender MyRichUncle. It went public in 2005 and was subsequently acquired by Merrill Lynch, which was then acquired by Bank of America.