Ola, one of India’s largest cab aggregators, reportedly announced on Wednesday that has laid off about 1,000 employees.
In a statement, the company said that the sacked employees were previously working for Taxi for Sure. An OLA official who spoke to The News Minute refused to give an exact number on the number of employees who were laid off.
This development comes after Flipkart laid off more than 650 employees last month.
In a bid to compete with international rival Uber, Ola had acquired Taxi for Sure (TFS), a smaller player in the segment for reportedly $200 million in March last year.
Since the acquisition, Ola and TFS continued to exist as separate entities and TFS’s COO Arvind Singhal was made CEO of the company. With this development, all TFS employees continued to work for TFS but all the driver-partners were onboarded to the OLA app. The Ola app had a sub-section called TFS.
VC Circle cited sources saying out of the 1300 TFS employees, Ola has retained only 250 mid-level employees.
This was the statement released by Ola:
The TaxiForSure (TFS) value proposition as an economy brand for customers, has been seamlessly integrated onto the Ola platform with the launch and rapid adoption of Ola Micro. TFS has contributed immensely towards Ola Micro’s success within a short span of time. Ola Micro has expanded to over 90 cities across India and accounts for the largest share of first time cab users coming onto any mobility platform. This has helped us achieve our objective of building an economy mobility offering for millions of users across the country. With all TFS driver-partners and customers coming on board the Ola app, the integration is now complete. As part of this integration over the last 18 months, we have achieved immense operational efficiencies, that have resulted in an improved experience for customers and driver-partners alike. In the course of the integration, we have absorbed as many TFS employees for open roles in Ola to support our growth. For positions that cease to exist as a result of this transition, we are offering enhanced severance benefits and outplacement services to help affected employees pursue new career opportunities.
Indian e-commerce giant on July 29 had announced that it would hand pink slips to under-performers as part of a process of making Flipkart a lean organisation.