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An industry observation in this round of layoffs by Lazada is that the parent company, Alibaba, is planning a public listing in the United States ( , Jan 9). Deep cost-cutting is speculated as necessary to attract investors to buy their IPO shares. According to reports by some Lazada employees in Singapore, some departments with 20 to 30 employees have been reduced to four or five people.  If such a report by affected Lazada employees is accurate, it reflects deeper issues besides simply reducing costs for the sake of Alibaba going public. Reducing 30 staff members to just five represents more than 80 per cent of layoffs. This is quite significant for an e-commerce company which is considered an industry leader in the digital transformation journey. Such a sudden cut in manpower indicates that the productivity level in Lazada could have been abysmal years before this latest round of retrenchment. This would also be quite incomprehensible in Lazada’s context, as the nature of its business activities involves a substantial amount of hands-on and operational aspects.  The Ministry of Manpower and a union stepping in may help to make the layoff exercise more bearable for affected employees and their loved ones. I hope an investigation into unfair practices can include other dimensions rather than just the two-week salary in compensation for every year of employment which Lazada was providing to those affected.