Ola Krutrim Lays Off 50 Employees In Fresh Job Cuts

SUMMARY

Ola Krutrim has cut about 50 roles in its linguistics team as part of a strategic restructuring drive

Employees impacted by these fresh layoffs include team leads and transcribers for regional languages such as Bengali, Malayalam and Punjabi

The Bengaluru-based startup has been sacking employees in its linguistics team since June

AI unicorn Ola Krutrim has reportedly cut about 50 roles in its linguistics team as part of a strategic restructuring drive.

A report by ET said that those affected by the exercise include team leads and transcribers for regional languages such as Bengali, Malayalam and Punjabi

Inc42 has sent queries to Krutrim on the development. The story will be updated upon receiving responses.

“The current phase of the data annotation project involving in-house linguistics has been successfully completed,” a spokesperson of the startup told ET in a statement.

This marks Krutrim’s third round of layoffs this year. The Bengaluru-based startup has been sacking employees in its linguistics team since June. At the time, it was reported that the startup fired dozens of employees.

Then a month later, Krutrim fired another 100 employees as part of its “strategic realignment” efforts to build leaner teams.

As per media reports, the startup has cut about 200 jobs this year itself. Besides, it has also seen a number of high-level exits.

Founded in 2023, Krutrim offers GPU-as-a-service, model-as-a-service, along with other multiple no-code platforms. It became a unicorn in January 2024 after raising $50 Mn in a round led by Z47 (erstwhile Matrix Partners India).

Krutrim aims to be a full-stack AI company by building its own silicon chips, cloud and AI foundational models.

Last month, the startup partnered with Cloudera to support large-scale analytics and data lake operations for its ride hailing platform Ola on Krutrim Cloud. Meanwhile in June, it unveiled its agentic AI assistant Kruti.

Last year, it also disclosed plans to develop India’s first AI silicon chips by 2026 to manage complex AI tasks and workloads.

Krutrum operates in the rapidly growing Indian AI market. With AI adoption rising rapidly in India, the country has emerged as an important market for AI giants. ChatGPT parent OpenAI, which is looking to open its office in Delhi NCR later this year, is also in talks to set up a 1 GW data centre facility in India.

Last week, during its annual general meeting, Reliance Industries announced partnerships with Meta and Google to increase AI adoption in India.