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Roehl Niño Bautista · · 2 min readTreeDots to shut down group-buying service this month
TreeDots, a Singapore-based food marketplace, is set to shut down its group-buying service by June 27, 2022, with its last delivery scheduled for the day before.
TreeDots co-founder and CEO Tylor Jong / Photo credit: TreeDots
In a message to hosts and buyers through Telegram, the firm also said that it would immediately reduce the availability of products on the group buy platform until June 24.
The message said the decision to cease the group-buying service “was not easy.”
Instead of tapping into its B2B infrastructure, the B2c or group buy presented ” more differences, meaning separate infrastructure to build, than areas of synergies,” Tylor Jong, co-founder and CEO at TreeDots, told Tech in Asia.
The development comes almost half a year after the platform, which offers surplus food products at lower prices, raised US$11 million in series A money and announced plans of expanding in the region. It is not yet known how many jobs will be affected by this closure.
TreeDots’ main selling point is connecting buyers to produce rejected for looking imperfect. With operations in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, the firm claims to have saved 2,500 tonnes of food by diverting surplus food. It also has 120 employees as of March this year.
The firm is looking at internal hiring for affected employees, and has shared their resumes to other companies with their permission, added Jong.
Singapore saw a boost in group-buying services in 2021 amid a growing trend of bulk purchasing in China. Such services generally lower product prices for individuals by ordering huge quantities before splitting the costs among buyers.
Asia has been seeing a series of layoffs, with more than 13,000 workers getting the boot in March alone. Shopee, for one, is trimming teams in Southeast Asia, while cryptocurrency and logistics players are also affected.
See Also: Shopee layoffs hit payments, food delivery and LatAm teams
Track all the layoffs across Asia here and help us maintain this list by filling this form with any information on job cuts and affected employees.
Update: (June 17, 2022, 3:30pm SGT): TreeDots side on the issue has been added.
Editing by Miguel Cordon and Arpit Nayak
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The development comes almost six months after the platform raised US$11 million in series A funding.
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