Delhi-based online marketplace Snapdeal has planned to relocate to a new campus-style office space in Gurgaon by this June. The company, whose employee strength has jumped fourfold with just a year, will be shifting to a 450k Sq. ft. office.
After searching for more than six months, the new 450,000 sq. ft (rent INR 58 – 83 per sq. ft) campus in Gurgaon will house Snapdeal’s technology, category, finance and HR teams, while the sales and customer services team will continue to work out of the Delhi offices. The Gurgaon campus will be able to boast over 4,500 employees. However, the company, which currently has eight offices in South Delhi’s Okhla region, plans to retain some of the existing offices.
The new office space will also have amenities such as a medical centre and a food court, and few other facilities including library, gym, spa and a creche for working parents.
Saurabh Nigam, vice-president of human resources (HR) at Snapdeal said, “We have grown from 1,200 employees to 5,000-plus in one year. The pace of hiring might not be the same next year but the ramp-up will continue and hence, consolidation was necessary,” he added, “working out of seven, eight buildings is inefficient and it was a drain on our resources, and our endeavour has been to consolidate the teams so there is no loss of productivity.”
The Snapdeal’s decision of consolidating the offices, can also be seen as a way towards reducing the operating cost for the company.
According to industry estimates cost of rent in Gurgaon varies fromINR 58 to INR 83 per sq. ft, Snapdeal has leased the new space for over 3 years, thus will not be looking for a new space for at-least some time. But looking at a pace at which the company is hiring, it seems dicey. Snapdeal has already provided offer letters to 200 students from management colleges and close to 450 candidates from engineering colleges to join the organization by May.
Snapdeal currently offers around 11 Mn products and 500+ categories on its platform, with current sellers of 100,000 on board and delivers to over 5,000 cities and towns in India. The company is led by large investors like Japan’s SoftBank ($627 Mn-OCT 2014) and became the biggest investor in the online retailer. Few others include BlackRock, Temasek, eBay Inc., Premji Invest, Intel Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Meanwhile India’s largest ecommerce company Flipkart, is alsobuilding a 1.5 Mn sq. ft campus in Bangalore that will have a capacity of housing 12,000 employees, which could be completed by 2017.
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