After Uber, Ola Will Let Go 1,400 Of Its India Workforce Due To COVID-19 Losses

It is no news that the impact of COVID-19 has been catastrophic on businesses. We¡¯re seeing large conglomerates in tech and other fields either announcing job cuts or laying off their staff.

Last week we saw Uber laying off thousands of its employees to deal with the losses that it experienced, and now next in line is India¡¯s very own Ola.

Reuters

Ride-hailing app Ola has announced that it will be laying off 1,400 jobs, which amounts to 35 percent of its workforce in India. This was announced by Ola co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal where he also mentioned that the revenue for the conglomerate had dropped a whopping 95 percent in the last two months due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

According to a spokesperson in a conversation with TechCrunch, employees from the mobility and food operations were planned to be furlough. Employees who are a part of the Ola Electric division, however, remain unaffected.

Aggarwal addressed its staff in an email stating, ¡°We had all hoped in the beginning that this would be a short-lived crisis and that its impact would be temporary. Over the past couple of months, all members of our extended leadership team have taken significant salary cuts to be able to help the organization delay tougher people decisions as we waited for the situation to evolve. But unfortunately, it¡¯s not been a short crisis.¡±

Ola

He added, ¡°And the prognosis ahead for our business is very unclear and uncertain. It is going to take a long time for people to go out and about like before. With more companies preferring to have a large number of employees work from home, air travel limited to essential trips and vacations being put off for better times, the impact of this crisis is definitely going to be long-drawn for us. The world is not going to revert to the pre-COVID era anytime soon.¡±

Employees who are being laid off will be given three months¡¯ salary as well as will be covered under insurance (them with their family) for the three month period. A few weeks ago, Uber had announced its decision to let go 500 of its employees working in the Indian division. Globally, Uber has laid off over 3000 employees to survive in the market.