Shopee fires 50% of its Thai staff

Photo by nhadatvideo via Flickr

E-commerce platform Shopee today announced 50% of its Thai staff are being fired alongside employees from Indonesia and Vietnam. The company, under the Singaporean tech group Sea, did not give a reason for the mass redundancies.

DealStreetAsia reported that Shopee has informed all staff on the redundancy hit list to pack up their stuff and wait for an official termination letter at home.

The announcement was made during a town hall meeting with staff from every branch in attendance.

Most of Sea group’s revenue is generated by Singaporean game developer and publisher, Garena. And in the first quarter of this year Shopee increased sales by 38.7 percent, but most of that income was generated from advertising costs and fees.

Related news

Last year, Shopee closed its branch in France after only 5 months because profits didn’t go as well as expected. Another branch in India also closed after 6 months because of the government’s policy to ban Chinese applications. More than 300 people lost their jobs in India because of that.

Thai employees on social media claimed they were shocked at the layoff announcement, saying it happened suddenly without advanced warning. Others added the Shopee human resource team say they would discuss compensation later. Another employee revealed he had been working for the company for 7 years and is surprised at what has happened. Another man says many team members of his team left the company group chat, and now he knows why.

SOURCE: Kapook | Khaosod

World News

Thaiger Talk

Join the conversation and have your say on Thailand news published on The Thaiger.

Thaiger Talk is our new Thaiger Community where you can join the discussion on everything happening in Thailand right now.

Please note that articles are not posted to the forum instantly and can take up to 20 min before being visible. Click for more information and the Thaiger Talk Guidelines.

Petch Petpailin

Petpailin, or Petch, is a Thai translator and writer for The Thaiger who focuses on translating breakingThai news stories into English. With a background in field journalism, Petch brings several years of experience to the English News desk at The Thaiger. Before joining The Thaiger, Petch worked as a content writer for several known blogging sites in Bangkok, including Happio and The Smart Local. Her articles have been syndicated by many big publishers in Thailand and internationally, including the Daily Mail, The Sun and the Bangkok Post. She is a news writer who stops reading news on the weekends to spend more time cafe hopping and petting dwarf shrimp! But during office hours, you can find Petch on LinkedIn and you can reach her by email at petch@thethaiger.com.

Related Articles