Nigerian deals site, DealDey has laid off some staffers in Lagos, in what the company co-MD, Etop Ikpe is calling a “headcount reduction.”
Techmoran, citing sources familiar with the matter first reported that more than 60 percent of DealDey’s staffers were affected by the layoffs.
“The reports are not entirely true but I can confirm that we have reduced our headcount in certain departments of our business, to meet our current organizational objectives,” Etop told TechCabal.
Etop is co-MD along with Kehinde Oriola. Both run the company now, after the founding CEO left in 2013 to focus on managing Konga.com.
Etop did not confirm how many staffers were affected. But he did say which departments were affected – warehousing and logistics.
We know that DealDey has been morphing for a while. While it started off as a Groupon-style daily deals website, it simply posts deals these days.
DealDey, Etop says, is focused on enhancing merchant – customer engagement on it’s three platforms; DealDey, lyf.ng and Promohub.
“This means we are reducing our involvement in order fulfilment and logistics. We have created a robust network of order fulfilment partners and we are continually growing that network to support efficient product delivery through our platform,” Etop says.
This is reason for the lay offs. Etop adds that the plan is to have the laid off staffers absorbed directly into the delivery network, or moved to work with partner third party logistics providers.
DealDey (as well as its two sister-outfits), will now fulfill by working with third party logistics providers. “We aim to reduce our average delivery time by 70%,” Etop says. “We have currently seen a 50% reduction in the last 3 weeks.”
They are also building out their technology, and strengthening the engineering team ahead of the blitz end-of-the-year shopping. The team has grown from four to twenty in the past few months, according to Etop.
After a follow-on investment from Kinnevik in February 2015, we began to see other parts of the company’s evolution gameplan, even though where the company was headed as an entity was not immediately obvious. The company launched the local business directory, Lfy.ng (a similar service to Vconnect which had since pivoted into a marketplace) and Promohub, a website, much like what DealDey currently is, that posts ongoing promotions.
“Long term, our goal is to build our hyperlocal deals marketplace, lyf.ng, and Promohub.ng ensuring that features are continuously responsive, consumer focused and deeply location driven,” Etop says.
