Ola Cabs has started laying off people, 200 employees have been reportedly laid off across tech, engineering, and product teams as part of the "restructuring exercise".

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As per a news report by Inc42 employees have been laid off from Ola Cabs, Ola Electric and Ola Financial Services teams.

The most impacted employees are those in the engineering department. In September, the company announced it would lay off 200 employees.

According to IANS, the company is "centralising operations and restructuring to minimise redundancies and strengthen relevant roles and functions". The Inc42 report quoting a spokesperson mentioned that the company has offered severance packages as per their respective notice periods and the layoffs began earlier this week.

In September last year CNBC-TV18 reported that mobility giant Ola started handing over pink slips to employees across software teams. Many of these employees are believed to have been working on different aspects of the Ola app. The move comes against the backdrop of declining sales of the Ola Electric scooter.

Also read: Ola to launch EV cab section for ride hailing with 10,000 electric cars

Ola, which launched its electric scooter in December last year, has been carrying out a restructuring exercise for the past few months. The company had earlier laid off close to 2,000 employees due to the closure of the pre-owned car business, Ola Cars, and quick commerce business Ola Dash.

More than 30 senior officials, including members of Bhavish Agarwal's leadership team, have quit in the last two years.

Also read: From Meta to Amazon to Twitter — A round up of big tech layoffs in 2022

In a statement, the firm said, "Ola Electric, India’s largest EV company, has been increasing its focus on non-software engineering domains with a clear focus on building engineering and R&D capabilities across - vehicle, cell, battery, manufacturing and automation, autonomous engineering streams.

The company currently has around 2000 engineers and aims to increase its engineering talent pool to 5000 over the next 18 months."

Additionally, the company shut down its neo-banking company Avail Finance, which it acquired in March 2022. As part of the plan, Avail Finance will merge with Ola Money, and neo-banking platform lending has been discontinued.

Also read: Amazon summoned by Pune Labour Commission for a meeting on 17 Jan over layoffs

First Published:Jan 13, 2023 1:57 PM IST