Pan African startup, Chipper Cash, has laid off at least 10 employees in its latest round of playoffs including the Global Head of Marketing and the Country Director of Kenya. This is the third time that Chipper Cash has laid off employees since December 2022 which has raised some questions about the potential impact such changes would have on the startup’s operations.
In a confirmation of the latest round of layoffs, Chipper Cash wrote in an email to TechCabal, “As part of our previously announced restructuring as an organization to focus on core products and markets, we recently made redundant a very small number of roles across our global teams.” The majority of workers laid off in this round were mostly product managers.
In December 2022, Chipper Cash laid off 50 employees before doubling this figure to 100 in February 2023. At the time, Chipper Cash CEO Ham Sserunjoogi blamed the changes on citing the “ongoing economic difficulties and the uncertainty surrounding the future.” (We explored these economic difficulties in an explainer here). Ham added the importance of adaptability and agility in the business environment, highlighting the changes needed to ensure long-term success and maintain competitive advantage.
But it is not just Chipper Cash that has laid off employees. In 2022, tech companies across the world laid off a record 93,000 workers as per Crunchbase. In Uganda, startups like SafeBoda and Wave Mobile Money all laid-off workers. However, 2023 blew the 2022 totals out of the water with 147,000 workers already laid off as of June as the economic downturn continues to ravage the whole world.
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Chipper Cash was founded in 2018 by Ham Serunjogi, a Ugandan and Maijid Moujaled, two African entrepreneurs who met while studying at Grinnell College in Iowa. The company offers a mobile-based, no-fee, P2P payment service that allows users to send and receive money instantly across borders in local currency. Despite having a big African usage, it is headquartered in San Francisco in the USA.
Chipper Cash has raised a total of $550 million in funding, including a $250 million Series C round in November 2021 that valued the company at $2 billion. The company’s investors include Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions, 500 Startups, and Liquid 2 Ventures.
The startup has struggled a little bit recently after two of its major backers, the cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX and Silicon Valley Bank all filed for bankruptcy. There were also rumours that it was considering an acquisition, a story that was broken by Bloomberg. Chipper Cash however denied these claims. Another report also claimed that the startup is no longer a unicorn, and its valuation has diminished due to market correction.