Vishal Garg who fired 900 people on Zoom sees miserable public market debut

Vishal Garg who fired 900 people on Zoom sees miserable public market debut


Embattled online mortgage lender Better.com, a company run by Indian-origin CEO Vishal Garg saw his stock plummeting miserable after making its public market debut.

Once valued at $7.7 billion, Garg’s SoftBank-backed company faced a harrowing time as it went public via a SPAC merger.

The stock, which had been trading at $17.44, plummeted 94 per cent to $1.15 last week.

The digital mortgage lender made its public debut on August 24 and the stock wasn’t exactly a hit with public investors.

Better.com had planned to go public at a $7.7 billion valuation two years ago.

Now, Better.com’s market cap is hovering around just $19.14 million.

Better.com is facing “shrinking revenue and haemorrhaging cash following an Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) inquiry and the dismissal of 7,000 employees over the past two years”, reports Forbes.

A July prospectus filed with the SEC, the company wrote that its management and accounting firm had expressed doubts about the company’s “ability to continue as a going concern”.

In June, Garg reportedly laid off its real estate team and shut down the unit.

The company is said to be shifting from an in-house agent model to a partnership agent model, TechCrunch reported.

In December 2021, Garg laid off nearly 900 employees over a Zoom call that created a furore.