US: Furnished apartment provider Zeus Living has joined the growing list of companies in the real estate and travel sectors to lay off a significant portion of its staff.
The firm, which provides furnished spaces for business travellers primarily, is laying off around 80 people from its workforce, which represents roughly 30 per cent of Zeus Living’s employees, according to Business Insider.
CEO Kulveer Taggar tweeted: “It’s especially tough because our people are the ones who’ve helped build the company and get us to where we are today.”
He added that he was committed to helping those laid off “soft land as much as possible”.
The news comes just three months after Airbnb made a strategic investment in Zeus Living’s $55 million Series B funding round in December. Comcast, CEAS Investments and TI Platform Management, as well as existing investors Alumni Ventures Group, Initialized Capital, NFX and Spike Ventures, participated in the round.
The funding was believed to have come in at $205 million post-money valuation.
Since launching in 2015, Zeus claims to have hosted 27,000 guests for a total of 650,000 nights and to have over 2,000 homes under its management. It typically redecorates landlords’ homes and rents them out to relocated employees for minimum stays of 30 days, including on platforms such as Airbnb now.
The furnished apartment rental company already faces stiff competition in the space with significantly-backed housing providers such as Domio, Sonder and Lyric, meaning it could well be forced to compete to pay the best rate for master leases.
The latter two companies have also announced heavy job losses in recent days.
For more information, visit the Zeus Living website here.</p
