Layoffs at Oyo too: 600 employees in tech and corporate division to be handed pink slips
NEW DELHI, DEC 3: India’s biggest travel tech firm, the IPO-bound OYO, on Saturday announced it will downsize about 10 per cent of its 3700-employee base.
The move will see 600 employees in the technology and corporate verticals being handed the pink slip. The company though plans to hire 250 others, mainly to bolster their relationship management teams.
OYO said this was part of wide-ranging changes in their organisational structure.
Product and engineering will be downsized. The numbers of employees at the corporate headquarters and in OYO Vacation Homes will be brought down too. Partner relationship management and business development teams will see new hires at the same time.
“OYO will downsize 10 per cent of its 3,700-employee base, which includes fresh hiring of 250 members and letting go of 600 employees,” a statement said.
Product and engineering teams are being merged for smoother functioning, it added.
The downsizing in tech is happening in teams which were developing pilots and proof of concepts such as in-app gaming, social content curation and patron facilitated content, the company said.
Additionally, members of projects which have now been successfully developed and deployed such as ‘Partner SaaS’ are being either let go or are being redeployed in core product and tech areas such as AI (artificial intelligence) driven pricing, ordering and payments, it informed.
The company will be adding 250 members primarily in its relationship management teams to ensure better consumer and partner satisfaction, and in business development teams to help scale up the number of hotels and homes on its platform.
As the integration of various functions of its European vacation homes business progresses, it is downsizing in some parts of the business to increase efficiency and harness synergies, OYO stated.
The company has also reassessed its corporate headquarters base afresh and is merging congruent roles and flattening team structures where needed, it added.
The company informed that it will be helping as many employees as it can in the outplacement and continuing with their medical insurance cover ranging up to three months on an average.
Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and Group CEO, OYO, said, “We will be doing all that we can to ensure that most of the people we are having to let go, are gainfully employed. Every member of the OYO team and I myself will proactively endorse the strength of each of these employees.
“It is unfortunate that we are having to part ways with a lot of these talented individuals who have made valuable contributions to the company. As OYO grows and a need for some of these roles emerges in the future, we commit to reaching out to them first and offering them the opportunity,” Agarwal added.
-TNIE
