Heura has announced an ERE to dismiss more than 10% of its workforce. The Barcelona startup, specialized in vegetable substitutes for animal meat, employs a total of 168 people, so the measure would affect around twenty people.
According to a company statement, the layoffs are due to a change in business strategy. Now, the company prioritizes reaching profits as soon as possible and discards its exponential growth strategy.
In fact, Heura already applied a workforce cut at the beginning of this year that implied the dismissal of 16 people, 9% of the total. The reason was the same: to reach the net profit as soon as possible. In that case, the layoffs affected workers linked to the international market while now the cuts affect several areas that had become oversized in recent years. At the moment, the company prefers not to give more details.
Faced with an unfavorable macroeconomic context, marked by inflation and rising interest rates, investment funds have increased pressure on their investee startups. In the case of Heura, the funds are Impact Fooding, Unovis, Lever VC, Capital V and Green Monday, among others.
Despite this context, the founders of the company, Marc Coloma and Bernat Añaños, explained at the end of April that throughout 2023 they planned to close an investment round to attract between 25 and 35 million euros. Regarding revenue, managers assured that growth would remain in double digits. Last year, Heura had a turnover of 31 million euros.
