Milkbasket sees redundancies as Reliance steps up integration

Milkbasket said there may be some realignment or reallocation of roles across functions within the group as part of its integration with JioMart, the ecommerce platform of Reliance. But “we are not laying off any employees”, a spokesperson said in a statement to ET, terming a question about layoffs as “completely incorrect “.

ET was unable to independently confirm the number of people impacted, but news reports from Entrackr indicated that it could be a quarter of Milkbasket’s headcount of over 600 employees. These employees work in sales, delivery operations, marketing and other verticals, a person aware of the matter told ET.

Reliance is also contemplating changes to Milkbasket’s branding and is considering having a single brand identity for the group’s grocery service. However, a final decision is yet to be made, and the Milkbasket brand will likely continue to exist in the near term, the person added.

“Milkbasket is live in 24 cities and operations are being further expanded in existing cities as well as expanding into new cities. In the long term, we aim to cover all Tier-1 cities with our daily subscription service,” the spokesperson said in the statement.

The changes at Milkbasket come after the recent departure of chief executive Yatish Talvadia, chief operating officer Abhinav Imandi and chief financial officer Gaurav Srivastava from the company. Talvadia was the last remaining cofounder at the firm, as per recent reports, after other cofounders Ashish Goel, Anurag Jain and Anant Goel left in 2021.

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The integration has been in the works for some time, and a few JioMart executives have joined the business too, another person in the know said.Reliance disclosed the acquisition of a 96.49% stake in Milkbasket with its fiscal 2022 second-quarter results. The deal had been preceded by issues in the startup’s cap table, with Kalaari Capital’s sale of its entire stake in the firm to Mahendra Nahata-led MN Televentures being hotly contested by Milkbasket.

Milkbasket competes directly with the likes of Tata-backed BigBasket’s BB Daily in the subscription-based delivery market. BB Daily is a part of BigBasket’s B2C arm, which reported an 89% widening in its net loss for the year through March 2023.