Ola Cabs Starts Laying-off Employees; Issues Pink Slips To 200 People

Ola Cabs, Bangalore-based cab aggregator, has started laying off people. The company has handed pink slips to 200 people across tech, engineering and product teams as a part of its "restructuring exercise", news platform Inc42 reported.

Those sacked are from Ola Cabs, Ola Electric and Ola Financial Services teams, it added. Employees from the engineering team have been impacted the most. The company had announced in September that it would lay off 200 people.

"We regularly conduct restructuring exercises to improve efficiencies, and there are roles which are now redundant. We will continue making new hires in engineering and design, including senior talent in our key priority areas," an Ola spokesperson said in the report.

In 2022, the company announced its plans to lay off as many as 1,000 employees. It had asked the employees to resign voluntarily.

Ola's restructuring exercise was then expected to go on for a few more weeks. It was taking place in a bid to shift focus towards the firm's electric mobility business.

In December 2022, Bhavish Aggarwal, founder of the company, told Business Standard that the company would start making lithium-ion cells and develop other products, including motorbikes and small, lightweight commercial vehicles.

"We have been working on some of these things behind the scenes and over the next 12 months you see us announcing many of these products," he said.

Earlier this week, the company also shut down its neo-banking firm Avail Finance, which it acquired in March 2022.

It also plans to merge Avail Finance with its subsidiary Ola Money and has stopped lending via the neo-banking platform.