The lockdown has cost yet another mass job loss. This time it’s at SoftBank-funded PaisaBazaar.com, where 1,500 employees have been shown the exit door. This accounts for almost 50 per cent of the company’s 3,000 members strong workforce.
This downsizing has mostly affected employees from the operations and business acquisition departments.
Apparently, as per media reports, PaisaBazaar, has been experiencing a fall of almost 90 per cent in the demand for new loans in few of its segments, since the lockdown.
Over the past two months, the pandemic has largely affected loan demand in the digital lending marketplace. As a result, many digital lenders are struggling to raise fresh funds from banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) for lending, which has caused the borrowing rates to spike.
As per the report in Livemint, the laid-off employees will be serving a month’s notice ending 30 June. In addition, almost 100 employees, including senior executives have been absorbed into the sister-concern Policybazaar.
The website, Paisaazaar.com had claimed in April that it had achieved an annualised loan disbursal rate of $1 billion, and that it was India’s first independent digital platform to reach this figure.
The company claimed to have disbursed Rs 480 crore of unsecured loans every month. However, the lockdown brought down the new business by almost 90 per cent and thus the bloodbath.
