The impact of COVID-19 and the unpredictable nature of the recovery has left five large companies with no choice but to reduce the size of its workforce. Due to COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown and fall in demand, five large companies in India –Uber India, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, and Cure.fit have together announced the reduction of over 4000 jobs.
The Ola company has fired 1400 employees. Food platform Swiggy has also laid off 1,100 employees. Zomato also laid off around 600 employees and cut salary by 50 percent.US based cab-aggregator Uber announced that it will lay off around 600 full-time employees in the India-South Asia region, a major part of the employees which are located in India. Similarly, health and fitness startup Cure.fit had also laid off around 800 people, to reduce costs.
Uber India’s operation has been hit severely by the nationwide lockdown, imposed first on March 24 and extended thrice until May 31. After a prolonged downtime for regular cab-hailing services, Uber was finally back on the roads last week and allowed to operate across the country with due safety measures. Due to the layoff around 600 full-time positions across driver and rider support are affected.
Pradeep Parameswaran, President, Uber India, and South Asia said that the layoffs are part of the company’s already announced global job cuts. He added that all impacted employees will receive medical insurance coverage for the next six months and a minimum of 10 weeks’ payout.
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 going to be long-drawn for us,” Ola CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal wrote in an e-mail to employees, adding that the crisis has affected the livelihood of millions of the company’s drivers.
Even as most tech startups will see the impact of the coronavirus –triggered slump, it will vary depending on which sectors these young companies focus on. For instance, ventures focused on travel and tourism will suffer damage, while those working within the health and wellness sector may find more takers than before. But a lot still depends on when businesses are allowed to return to normal if at all.
