Shopee terminates staff in Indonesian office, says no other SEA markets in tandem

Ecommerce giant Shopee has laid off about 200 employees in Indonesia. This was told to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE by sources familiar with the matter.

Staff affected are within a customer service team in Indonesia and are made up of a mixture of full-time and contract staff, MARKETING-INTERACTIVE understands. The decision was made in order to improve the company’s efficiency and is unrelated to the layoffs that happened last year where there were multiple rounds of layoffs conducted towards the end of 2022 in Singapore, Indonesia and China. 

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Staff affected in this round of layoffs will be getting a severance pay according to Indonesia’s regulations. These include access to health insurance for up to three months after their last working day and a one-month salary bonus, according to a source familiar with the matter. Muslim employees who have been let go will also be given a religious holiday allowance, MARKETING-INTERACTIVE understands.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE also understands that the layoffs are a one-off and that there will not be further layoffs happening in tandem with this in other markets and teams.

The layoffs come just a week after the eCommerce company announced its financial results for its fourth quarter in 2022. It reported its first-ever profitable quarter with a total generally accepted accounting principle (GAAP) revenue at US$3.5 billion, up 7.1% year-on-year, according to a statement. It also saw a US$495.7 million in adjusted EBITDA, as compared to negative US$492.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2021.

Shortly before that, Shopee announced that it would be looking to expand its work force in Malaysia as its parent company Sea Limited announced plans to create more than 2,000 jobs, according to International Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz. According to a statement, the expansion into Malaysia will see the creation of cloud services, data hosting and processing, as well as a new logistics e-commerce warehouse. The targeted deadline for the new initiative is by 2024.

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