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Hello reader,
If you’ve ever received terrible news, you know how awful it feels. The only thing worse than this is probably getting another one, within a short span of time.
In these cases, it can feel like there’s some kind of compounding effect. In other words, it’s like “more than the sum of its parts,” but applied to feeling bad.
I wonder if that’s what the employees at Osome are going through. Within just one year, the Singapore-based online accounting firm has enacted a second round of layoffs, even though it says that only a small percentage of the workforce was affected.
Today we look at:
- More job cuts at Osome
- Why Indonesia banned Temu
- Other newsy highlights such as OpenAI’s new US$4 billion credit facility and a Singapore generative AI firm’s US$2.5 million funding
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Wham bam
Image credit: Timmy Loen
According to Osome, it laid off “less than 2%” of workers in its Singapore office, but I wonder how reassuring that really is. Sometimes, what matters isn’t the scale of the move but the fact that it happened in the first place.
- Ripple effect: While Osome said that the cuts affected staff in Singapore, sources told Tech in Asia that the company also reduced the headcount of its Malaysia office. The firm has yet to confirm this information.
- Double trouble: This is the second time that Osome axed jobs within the span of a year – it previously terminated about 70 employees at the end of 2023. In that instance, the company said the move was part of its efforts to break even.
- Worth it?: A few days after the September job cuts, CEO and founder Victor Lysenko said in a LinkedIn post that Osome became “cash-positive” for the “first time in August.”
Read more: Osome cuts staff anew as it vies for profitability
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