YouTrip cuts a third of HK workforce, faced staff departures in SG

Multicurrency travel card operator YouTrip has laid off a third of its 30-plus employees in Hong Kong as it begins shutting down its office in the city and moving critical roles to Singapore.

The retrenchment comes two days before YouTrip announced plans to hire over 50 roles in product development and engineering in Singapore by 2022. The recruitment spree is part of a push to revamp its mobile app and launch YouTrip Business, a multicurrency account and cards targeting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Interviews with the company as well as five ex-employees offer a peek into the reality of the three year-old startup in the past year, which has struggled with a sudden decline in cross-border spending as travel came to a halt amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

YouTrip also dealt with an “exodus” of staff from its Singapore office at the end of 2020 that hit morale, with some questioning the young fintech company’s apparent lack of innovation and inability to adapt to shifts in demand. For many, a perceived lack of transparency around the relocation of its headquarters to Singapore was the final straw.

The job cuts, meanwhile, have left former YouTrip employees in Hong Kong and Singapore feeling like they were unfairly treated.

Speaking to Tech in Asia from Singapore, YouTrip CEO Caecilia Chu says that the Hong Kong layoffs were not a cost-control measure but part of the firm’s decision to shift its headquarters.

“We are growing the team. We are not cost-cutting or reducing headcount,” YouTrip CEO Caecilia Chu tells Tech in Asia. “When we say we’re progressively hiring, it’s real.”

Founded in 2018 by Chu, a Harvard Business School graduate, the YouTrip card offers travelers preferential exchange rates to 150 currencies. To date, the app has been downloaded over 1 million times and has processed over 10 million transactions.

The aim of the relocation is to “house all critical functions under one roof” in Singapore, which is a core market for the company, the CEO explains. Like Chu, the rest of YouTrip’s leadership team have either moved or started doing so.

YouTrip’s Hong Kong headquarters was home to the firm’s core teams, including engineering, product, finance, and human resources. Its Singapore and Thailand offices, on the other hand, manage customer service, marketing, and compliance functions.

“My fundamental hope was that [employees in Hong Kong] could relocate with us,” Chu adds. However, “personal reasons” as well as a change in reporting structures in some teams meant that some employees were let go.

The company’s recent staff cuts in Hong Kong affected “about 10 people” or 10% of its overall headcount, according to Chu. Before that, YouTrip employed about 110 people across its offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand, which opened in November 2019.

But the reason for the outrage among affected employees, however, appears to stem from how the layoffs were handled and communicated.

“Fired from their homes”

Reversing key decisions

Did it move fast enough?

“A few more years of runway”

Betting on SMEs