Kenyan startup Sendy has announced it will be shutting down one of its products, Sendy Supply, and this means it will be laying off 20% of its staff, according to a statement sent to TechCabal today.
Sendy Supply, a product that allows general retailers to purchase stock at competitive prices from multiple suppliers and manufacturers, will be paused as the company shifts its focus to another product, Sendy Fulfillment. But the cost of this shift in business model is the employment of 54 people or 20% of the company’s 270-strong workforce.
This move, according to a statement by the company’s co-founder and CEO Mesh Alloys, is part of a wider strategic focus to “consolidate efforts around solutions that impact more customers and speak to the current and immediate market challenges.”
According to Alloys, the company will now be solely focused on Sendy Fulfillment, the company’s product that allows online brands and large ecommerce brands to store and distribute their products.
“With the growing uptake of digital commerce and recognising the opportunities it presents for businesses, we are doubling down on Fulfillment to support online merchants with the necessary tools to sell and fulfil directly through digital platforms,” Alloys said in the statement.
This is the latest tweak the company is making to its business model in recent times. Two weeks ago, it announced that one of its products, Sendy Transport, will exclusively be used by businesses. This heralded its transition into a B2B business model as all of its three products at the time, Sendy Transport, Sendy Supply and Sendy Fulfillment were focused on businesses. This move, insiders had told TechCabal, was the company’s bid to chase profit.
Back in July, the company laid off 10% of its 300-strong workforce. Alloys had told TechCabal in a statement that it made the move to respond to the “current realities impacting tech companies globally”, which forced the company to rethink how it is doing business, and cut costs.
Since then, Sendy has launched an aggressive run to keep its engine oiled up, especially in the face of a tech downturn that has made it difficult for it to raise.
“Our path forward is to aggressively grow our core business, Sendy Fulfillment, through deepening customer value. We believe that this consolidated service offers a massive opportunity in solving challenges that businesses, large and small, face with warehousing, packaging and last mile delivery,” the concluding part of the statement reads.
