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    'Totally wrong & heartless.' India Inc slams Vishal Garg for firing 900 employees on Zoom meet, calls for 'compassion & dignity at the workplace'

    Synopsis

    Better.com CEO Vishal Garg last week gave pink slips to a group of over 900 employees.

    Radhika Gupta Harsh Goenka Vishal GargAgencies
    The news has sent shockwaves on the Internet, with many calling the boss insensitive for laying off his staff without prior warming just when the holiday season was underway.
    Indian corporate bosses are not happy with the news of a New-York based mortgage lender firing over 900 employees on a Zoom call just days after the company had received $750 million in funding.

    The Edelweiss Mutual Fund CEO Radhika Gupta on Wednesday expressed her shock on the report, while Harsh Goenka, the chairman of RPG Enterprises chairman such incidents give corporate the 'heartless' tag.

    Better.com CEO Vishal Garg last week gave pink slips to a group of over 900 employees of his company in a zoom call that barely lasted three minutes. This happened just before the holiday season.

    The news sent shockwaves on the Internet, with many calling the boss insensitive for laying off his staff without prior warming just when the holiday season was underway.

    Businesswoman Gupta, who is the MD & CEO of Edelweiss MF, has bashed the CEO by saying that "no growth is worth this human cost."

    "A company that just received $750 million in funding and will IPO has to fire 900 people in holiday season this way?
    No grow is worth this human cost," she wrote on Twitter where she has over 127K followers.

    Gupta further said that it's time companies value compassion and dignity at the workplace among other things.

    "It’s time we value compassion and dignity at the workplace as much as we do valuations," she said.

    The short video clip that showed infamous CEO Garg firing his 900 employees on a Zoom call was uploaded on Twitter by an axes employee. The video soon went viral and started making the rounds on the Internet.

    The chairman of Indian RPG Group conglomerate, Harsh Goenka, too, reacted on the viral video and called the lay off "totally wrong".

    The boss said that the CEO should have done it one-on-one with the employees instead sacking the staff on a three-minute Zoom call, Goenka also expressed sorrow for those who were sacked.

    "My heart went out to the 900 employees sacked through Zoom by Vishal Garg. Totally wrong! Do it on a one on one basis. And in person," Goenka wrote on Twitter.

    He also said that the Better.com CEO should not have fired the staff right before Christman and especially after their recent $750 million fund infusion. "And not before Christmas and after a $750 mn recent infusion. This is how Corporates get a heartless tag!" he added.


    In the short clip, Garg tells his employees that they were part of the "unlucky group" that was being fired.

    "This isn't news that you're going to want to hear...If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off. Your employment here is terminated effective immediately," he says, adding that this is the second time he had to be in this situation in his entire career.

    According to DailyMail.co.uk, Garg's mortgage company, Better.com, received a $750 million cash infusion just a few days ago.

    The company is backed by SoftBank and currently stands on a valuation of $7 billion, according to the report.

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