SWVL, an Egypt-born and Dubai-based mobility business, announced today that it plans to lay off 32 percent of its workers.
According to the company’s LinkedIn site, it employs over 1,330 people. Around 400 employees will lose their employment as a result of the mobility company laying off nearly 30% of its workforce.
Tech companies, both private and public, have had to face a reckoning in recent months, with their stock prices plummeting. An economic slump has impacted company finances, forcing them to make cost-cutting decisions, the most important of which is laying off staff.
The Dubai-based startup’s restructuring joins a long list of global cross-stage layoffs in what has been a difficult month for tech workers. According to statistics, over 15,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in the United States alone. Companies including Klarna, Getir, Gorillas, and Bolt (the payments startup) have fired employees, while Snap, Twitter, and Instacart have halted or stopped hiring entirely.
SWVL has had a very busy 18 months leading up to this announcement. The company went public in March after a SPAC merger with Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital, a women-led blank check company based in the United States. It went public at $10 per share with a target valuation of $1.5 billion, but has since traded between $4 and $8.
According to insiders, the layoffs come just a month after SWVL purchased Zeelo, a U.K.-based mass transit company, for $100 million. SWVL has acquired five acquisitions in the last year, including door2door in Germany, Voltlines in Turkey (for $40 million), Shotl in Spain, and Viapool in Argentina.
Despite the fact that these acquisitions contributed to the company’s total growth, SWVL stated it will have to reduce the number of roles that are automated as a result of investments in its engineering, product, and support functions teams.
