E-commerce website Snapdeal said that it is planning to expand its technology team with the addition of 120 engineers the current year as the firm is enhancing personalization and recommendation features for its users.
Competing against e-commerce giants like Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart, Snapdeal has recently come up with its ‘Snapdeal 2.0 strategy’ (launched in August 2017) which it claims has helped drive 3X growth in business volumes, while reducing costs by 90 per cent.
“This resurgence also enabled Snapdeal to become the first e-commerce company in India to become cash flow positive, giving it the freedom to invest its earnings in growing the business,” the company said in a statement.
Snapdeal has confirmed hiring nearly 150 new team members, mostly in technology, engineering, product and design teams in 2018-19. Interestingly, more than half of the new hires in 2018-19 were former employees opting to rejoin across technology, supply chain, user growth, marketing and business verticals at Snapdeal.
“In the coming months, Snapdeal is looking to hire nearly 120 engineers who will work on various projects in the domains of machine learning, gamification, personalization, cloud-agnostic production systems, etc. The positions span across entry, mid and senior positions in areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, full stack, Java back-end and front-end engineering.” – Snapdeal Spokesperson
Snapdeal said it is also looking at adding vernacular components to the buying experience. “The technology team is helping Snapdeal to deepen its efficiency initiatives… improve the experience for users and also lower the cost of operations. Technology continues at the heart of Snapdeal 2.0’s success in driving growth, superior experience and more efficient operations,” it maintained.
Snapdeal, which had seen its business being impacted severely by the intense competition in the online shopping segment, had in 2017 dumped a US$ 950-million takeover offer from rival, Flipkart. It was then that Snapdeal Co-Founders, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal had said that the online portal will pursue a fresh strategy in the Indian market.
This strategy has helped Snapdeal narrow its consolidated losses substantially to Rs.613 crore for 2017-18 from Rs.4,647.1 crore in 2016-17.
Apart from trimming headcount, the company also sold its payment services unit, Freecharge to Axis Bank and Vulcan Express to Kishore Biyani’s Future Supply Chain Solutions.