Oyo lay-offs, something that has been on a rise for some time now, is reaching US shores. Continuing its firing spree, the budget hotel aggregator has now reportedly laid off around 360 of its employees in the United States, which accounts for more than one-third of its total employees in the U.S.
According to a report from Skift, the layoff happened across number of job categories, including business development managers, talent acquisition leads, and general managers. While California has lost more than 50 business development managers, Florida saw more than 20 firings in that category.
Commenting on this, an OYO spokesperson said that the “difficult decisions about headcount” would enable the company to “hire and invest in other areas that are key to our ability to serve property owners and guests well for the long term.”
The development comes just weeks after it was reported that OYO is laying off around 2,000 employees across India and China. The same was citied as a process to make operations more ‘tech enabled’ and reduce dependence on manpower.
At that time, most of the layoffs were in the sales, supply and operations divisions. The layoff of employees in the U.S. is being touted as a part of the new strategy that includes profitability through “measured growth” and technology investment; realigning the network and centralising some processes to create “highly efficient teams”.
The move comes at a time when the company is trying to move away from its aggressive growth plans pursued for past couple years and is adopting a more balanced way to create a profitable business. Reports have linked this to Softbank pressure, since the Japanese tech conglomerate itself is under massive investor pressure over mounting losses on failed bets.
Although the company has been growing rapidly, its losses have been growing every year, multiplying six fold in 2019 and ballooning up to ₹2,384 crores. Since April last year, around 500 hotels in 100 cities have cut off ties with the company. However, Oyo declined the report and said that the numbers were ‘inflated’.
