Whether it be 2022 or 2023, some things just do not seem to change. And unfortunately for employers and employees alike, layoffs seem to be one of those things. Friday the 13th marked yet another instance of employees being laid off at an enterprise – this time, it is ridesharing major Ola, according to a report by The Economic Times. The layoffs began earlier this week, and most of the affected employees were freshers who were recently hired straight out of college.
As part of its “restructuring exercise towards its electric dream,” Ola laid off around 200 employees across multiple teams in the fresh round of job cuts. The affected employees hailed from the tech and product teams across Ola Cabs, Ola Electric, and Ola Financial Services. In a statement, the company said that it conducted restructuring exercises on a regular basis to “improve efficiencies,” and has eliminated the redundant roles. Going forward, Ola will be bringing in new blood by driving recruitment in engineering and design, including the influx of fresh senior talent in what it claims to be “key priority areas.”
This also comes after Ola announced its plans to launch a “premium” fleet of 10,000 electric cabs in the coming weeks. The fleet is currently in pilot.
According to IANS, the ridesharing giant is “centralizing operations and restructuring to minimize redundancies and strengthen relevant roles and functions.” Impacted employees do not have to leave Ola empty-handed – the company is offering them severance packages as per their respective notice periods. The fresh round of layoffs shaves off a portion of Ola’s 2,000-strong engineer workforce, but the ride-hailing company is looking to increase these numbers in the coming months. According to a report by Inc42, Ola is looking to further bolster its engineering talent pool over the next 18 months and increase the number to 5000.
This development does not come as a surprise, even though it marks the latest round of sackings by startups. Last September, the ridesharing major had planned to reduce its workforce by cutting off 200 employees across engineering roles. However, it opted not to go through with the layoffs at that time, and the recent development showed that Ola had simply delayed the inevitable. This does, however, bring the total number of laid-off employees by Ola in the thousands – it had laid off 1400 employees in 2020 as it failed to bear the brunt of the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. Later last year, the company laid off a further 1000 people from its cloud kitchens, as well as its food and grocery delivery businesses. And as recently as early this week, reports surfaced that Ola was shutting Avail Finance (which it acquired last year for about $50 million) app and integrating it with OlaMoney.
