Reliance Retail-owned Milkbasket has taken significant strides towards streamlining its operations. As part of this endeavor, the company is currently in the process of integrating its brand with the popular e-commerce platform, JioMart. A spokesperson from Milkbasket shared this update in response to recent reports speculating about the potential discontinuation of Milkbasket. These reports had hinted at the launch of an innovative platform called ‘Jio Smart Daily’ by Reliance Retail.
“The business is being integrated with JioMart which is our e-commerce platform,” said the spokesperson.
Reinstating the same, an industry source said, “Reliance plans to rebrand the Milkbasket application and focus only on promoting a single Jio brand.”
According to media reports, Milkbasket has undergone a workforce reduction of approximately 25-30 percent, resulting in the dismissal of about 600 employees in the past few months. Although SnackFax was unable to provide direct confirmation regarding the exact scale of the layoffs, reliable sources familiar with the situation stated that the affected employees encompass the entire offline marketing, sales, and head office teams.
Read More: Reliance Retail’s Milkbasket to witness departure of 130 employees amid ongoing restructuring
Declining any layoffs, the Milkbasket spokesperson stated, “As part of the integration, there may be some realignment/reallocation of roles across functions within the group, but we are not laying off any employee.”
Additionally, in March of this year, the company experienced significant departures at the top-level, which included the company’s sole Co-Founder Yatish Talvadia, its COO Abhinav Imandi, and CFO Gaurav Srivastava. These departures have been verified through the LinkedIn profiles of the respective employees.
Read More: Reliance Retail’s Milkbasket sees top-level resignations after JioMart deal
The restructuring process commenced in March of this year. Recently, a former employee of the company, who wishes to remain anonymous, revealed that on July 27, the pan-India marketing team and the growth team were asked to resign by the HR department. Additionally, the category team has been placed on a performance improvement plan (PIP), according to the same source.
According to reports, the remaining staff of Milkbasket will be given the opportunity to secure positions within Jio’s SmartPoint and Smart Bazaar teams.
Responding to queries, the Milkbasket spokesperson said, “Your queries are citing incorrect information. We would like to state that Milkbasket, as a brand, continues to grow and serve its customers. Milkbasket is live in 24 cities and operations are being further expanded in existing cities as well as being launched into new cities. In the long term, we aim to cover all tier 1 cities with our daily subscription service.”
After its acquisition by Reliance Retail, the brand, which initially operated in just three cities – Delhi, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru, significantly accelerated its expansion and extended its presence to approximately 30 cities. In the financial results for Q2 FY22, the retail giant revealed that it had acquired a 96.49 percent stake in Milkbasket.
According to the industry source, starting early this year, the company opted to scale back its presence in the recently entered cities and focused on consolidating its operations in the existing markets.
