Ola, a ride-hailing platform, has stopped plans to layoff employees in different software verticals. A source within the company confirmed this to Business Headers Friday.
BUsiness Headers reported earlier this week that the company was giving pink slips to employees from different software teams. Many of these employees were thought to have worked on different parts of the Ola app. Business Headers reported that 200 employees would likely be affected by the job cuts.
Ola rethought the plan after the report was released. Senior leaders at the company felt the move was unfair. “For example, in some cases, five software engineers were involved in a project that could have been entrusted to only three people. The firm wanted to reduce redundancy by restructuring its engineering workforce. According to the source, however, the leaders believed the process was unfair.”
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Ola has yet to make a formal statement about the rollback of the plan.
Deccan Herald first reported that Ola was making a U-turn in its layoff plans. Bhavish Aggarwal, founder of Ola, asked managers to apologize and calm down their nerves. On Thursday, Ola’s top officials were reported to have apologized to their teams for the “stressed and tension” caused by the development during a town hall.
Ola explained to DH that the way she managed the productivity assessment was not as efficient as she would like.
Ola said Monday that Ola Electric, India’s largest electric vehicle company, had been increasing its focus in non-software engineering areas. The company’s focus is on engineering and R&D across vehicle, cell, battery and manufacturing. The company has approximately 2000 engineers. It plans to grow its engineering talent pool by 5000 in the next 18-months. According to the statement the company was centralizing operations.
The Ola Electric Scooter, which was launched in December 2013, is experiencing declining sales. For the past few months, the company has been undergoing a restructuring exercise.
Due to the closing of Ola Cars pre-owned car business and Ola Dash quick commerce business, nearly 2,000 employees were laid off. In the past two years, 30 of its top executives, including founder Agarwal’s management team, have resigned.
After its S1 scooter caught on fire in March, Ola was also subject to criticism. This incident, along with eight others, was investigated by an independent high-ranking committee. The committee discovered flaws in the BMS, safety systems and quality of the cells in different electric vehicle company’s battery packs.
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