Ola Lays Off 200 Software Engineers As Part Of Its Massive Restructuring Plan

ANI Technologies, the parent company of cab fleet platform Ola Cabs and electric two wheel manufacturer Ola Electric, has laid off 200 employees from software engineering profiles across verticals, as per people aware of the development. 

The development has come almost a month after Bhavish Aggarwal, founder of ANI Technologies, relaunched Ola Electric S1 scooter and announced plans to launch Ola Electric car. 

People aware of the development said that ANI Technologies is centralising its operations and is undertaking exercises to ‘minimise redundancy’. The startup currently has over 2,000 engineering roles across vehicle, cell, battery, manufacturing and autonomous engineering streams. This means that the startup has slashed almost 10% of the engineering roles. For centralising the operations, the startup has hinted at hiring 3,000 more engineers in the coming month. 

It can’t be overlooked that Ola Electric, on which ANI Technologies is banking for the next growth phase, has witnessed a drop in the sales number over the last few months.  

In August, Ola Electric sold around 3,438 units of escooters, as per the data available on Vahan. In July, it sold 3,863 units. These numbers are significantly lower than what Ola Electric sold during April this year, when it saw the highest sales of 12,707 units. Since then, the sales of escooters have been on a downward trajectory. 

Since the launch of Ola Electric escooters last year, reports of malfunction and fire incidents have plagued the company. Apart from this, reports claimed talks were held between Uber and Ola for a possible merger, which Aggarwal rubbished on social media. 

Last month, Inc42 reported that Ola Cabs had shut down its car leasing scheme which had covered thousands of drivers across the country and was fighting legal cases against thousands of its drivers over the ownership. Later, Inc42 learnt that Aggarwal’s team was looking for an out-of-the-court settlement.

Earlier this year, Ola also shut down its car marketplace business Ola Cars, which was launched not too long ago. Simultaneously, the startup also shut down quick commerce delivery business Ola Dash. The shutting down of the businesses resulted in the company laying off around 1,000 employees.

Only time will tell if the renewed focus on EVs, escooters as well as cars, along with battery manufacturing, and shutting down other non-core business will result in a change of fortunes for the startup.

As per Inc42’s layoff tracker, Indian startups, including Ola, have laid off 12,400 employees in 2022 so far. 

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