Amid the ongoing lockdown restrictions, 70 employees of Grofers’ ancillary business who were employed in the non-essential categories have been affected as they have been rendered redundant. Of this, while some have been absorbed in other places, the remaining 32 have been asked not to work.
“Due to the ongoing restrictions, 70 team members of our ancillary business, dealing with non-essential categories were affected. We continue to actively work to place these affected employees in the main Grofers business. We have already absorbed 38 impacted employees in our core essentials business. The remaining 32 have been asked not to work but provided full health insurance and 33% salary till we find roles that are suited to their skill set over the next month or two,” a company spokesperson said.
Grofers said it employs 20,000 team members across 27 cities in India, of which 2,500 warehouse and delivery staff were hired in the past 3 weeks. “We are further hiring 4,500 more to streamline our operations to cater to the surge in demand in our core essentials business,” the spokesperson added.
The company delivers over 25 million products to customers every month in 27+ cities such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune.
Meanwhile, Zomato was reportedly in talks to acquire Grofers as part of expanding its service offering. The all-stock deal puts the valuation of Grofers at $750 million. This is $100 million more than the last valuation of the grocery startup when it received funding.
SoftBank Vision Fund, which has made investments in Zomato and Grofers both, will reportedly bring in fresh investments to the tune of up to $200 million once the merger process is completed.
However, Zomato later denied these reports of an acquisition.
Grofers and Zomato are already working together with the latter’s door delivery mechanism being used to delivery grocery items to customers on behalf of Grofers.
Grofers has partnered with several offline neighbourhood kirana stores for its business and these are also integrated into the service being offered through the Zomato app.