Health and fitness startup Curefit has undertaken a second round of layoffs and furloughs, impacting hundreds of employees, two months after it laid off over 700 workers, according to people directly aware of the matter.
The downsizing comes at a time when the company anticipates its operations to take more than a year to recover due to the Covid-19 pandemic which has led to the closure of fitness centres. Indian government has yet to allow for the reopening of gyms, leading to a severe blow to the industry.
“Since the last few days, they have furloughed and laid off around 600 employees.. 70-80% of the 600 are being furloughed and will be brought back as gyms open up. This has impacted its verticals including Eat.Fit, Cultfit, and Curefit,” a former employee directly aware of the matter told ET.
Another ex-employee that ET spoke to indicated that about 50 people in his team alone have been asked to leave.
An investor in the company explained that the company is now making a complete transition given offline footfalls will take time to recover even when gyms open up.
Another executive in the company aware of the developments said they had anticipated gyms to open up by July but in light of continued shutdown further job cuts and furloughs have been implemented. The laid-off staff will be paid for their notice period along with it they will be handed out anywhere between 15 days to three-months of severance depending on their role, said the person cited above.
Curefit did not respond to ET’s email seeking comment on Thursday.
In an internal email on July 15, Mukesh Bansal, cofounder, Curefit, lauded the efforts of the staff for making it a ‘digital-first company’. “We have had a very tumultuous last 4 months, with most teams scrambling almost on a daily basis with frequent changes, shifting priorities, various cost-cutting measures, and continued uncertainty around the pandemic,” Bansal told employees. “I think as a team we did the best we can and the agility/hustle that was shown by many teams is absolutely incredible and is the reason that we are now able to operate like a digital-first company,” he said.
In May, along with the layoffs, the company had also implemented salary cuts across levels. While the founders will forgo their salaries, the management team and other staff would be taking a 50-20% pay cut as part of a plan to cut costs, the company had said.
“Even though we don’t have clarity about what to expect in the coming months, one thing is certain that pandemic and after-effects are here to stay for many quarters or even more than a year,” Bansal said. “What we face today is the new reality and it will not change much anytime soon. We will also continue to absorb and react to the situation as it keeps evolving in the coming months.”
Aside from shuttering some of its fitness centres under the CultFit brand, the company has also shut down a number of its EatFit cloud kitchen outlets. Earlier this year, the startup had raised around Rs 832 crore in a funding round led by Temasek, the Singapore government-backed investment company.
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