(Reuters) – India’s GoMechanic, a car service and repair firm, will lay off 70% of its workforce and conduct a third-party audit of its business due to errors in its financial reporting, the company’s co-founder Amit Bhasin said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.
“We made errors in judgment as we followed growth at all costs, including (with) regard to financial reporting, which we deeply regret,” Bhasin said in his post.
Founded in 2016, the Sequoia India-backed startup has serviced and repaired more than two million cars in India through its service centers, and says it costs 40% less than automakers’ own offerings.
Last year Reuters reported that SoftBank was in talks to invest $35 million in the company at a valuation of around $600-700 million.
Indian startups raised $24 billion last year, a third lesser than in 2021, according to Venture Intelligence.
They have let go thousands of employees in recent months to become profitable, as investors have become more circumspect of high valuations in a turbulent stock market that has hammered tech shares across the globe.
GoMechanic and Sequoia did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
(Reporting by Jaiveer Shekhawat in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)