This week, a major fleet management solutions provider announced that they would lay off hundreds of workers due to financial struggles triggered by the Coronavirus outbreak.
On Wednesday, Samsara said that they would cut their global workforce by 18% by laying off 300 people in an effort to reduce expenses.
“This was a painful decision that affects our colleagues and friends, and we’re doing everything we can to support those who were impacted including severance pay, coaching and outplacement services, and healthcare coverage for the rest of the year,” Samsara CEO Sanjit Biswas said.
Samsara said that the layoffs would be concentrated outside of their North American market.
Biswas says that the COVID-19 crisis is “the most significant economic event in the past 100 years.”
Samsara also said that they had raised $400 million in equity financing to prepare the company to weather the economic crisis, bringing the company’s total amount of cash on hand to $600 million.
San Francisco-headquartered Samsara was founded in 2015 and provides a variety of fleet management tools including GPS tracking, ELD solutions, and dash cam systems.
This is not the first ELD provider to be hit hard by hard economic conditions during the Coronavirus crisis. In late April, RoadLog ELD announced that they were permanently discontinuing service “due to unforeseen market conditions.” ELD manufacturer KeepTruckin also laid off 349 workers, or 18% of its workforce, at the end of March due to economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic.