Food delivery startup Plum lays off all staff

Food delivery startup Plum has laid off its entire staff, casting doubt on its continued operations in Singapore and its home market of Hong Kong.

According to a report in the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, Plum co-founder Desmond Clinton Cheung, who is also the company’s GM, said full-time contracts for all 110 workers, including his own, had been terminated. The company is creating a new structure which would give staff who wish to remain with the company an equity ownership.

“In the past, they were salaried staff and they would become shareholders,” he said.

Plum was founded in Hong Kong a year ago and Cheung said it may have grown “a bit fast”.

Efforts to reduce losses, including laying off 40 staff several months ago, had not worked and Cheung said he believed the new company structure offered an opportunity for the company to continue trading on a more sustainable basis.

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