Ola Plans To Lay Off 200 Employees In Engineering Department: Report

The cab-aggregator Ola is planning to layoff as many as 200 employees or 10 per cent of its workforce from engineering department in order to centralize operations. Earlier reports emerged that the company has sacked 500 employees. SoftBank Group-backed cab aggregator has a total of 2,000 engineers in its workforce. 

The development comes at a time when the company’s electric vehicle segment, Ola Electric has been undergoing restructuring for the second time this year, in order to unify operations. With its new restructuring plan, the company is planning to focus on expanding its portfolio across the electric vehicle segment.

As part of the restructuring activity, Ola Electric onboarded, B Sivakumar and B Ganapathiraman, amongst several others to unify operations. Moreover, the company also elevated the position of YS Kim, a veteran leader in the industry to head sales, Direct-to-Consumer (D2C), and charging network segments in the company. 

In the past few months, ANI Technologies, the parent company of Ola has shut down several businesses including Ola Cars and Ola Dash, to focus on the electric two-wheelers and car verticals. Bhavish Aggrawal, Ola’s CEO on August 15 this year, announced that the company will be entering the electric four-wheeler segment by 2024 while unveiling the design features of the car. The company is also upgrading its electric vehicle manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu to scale operations and is also increasing the production of EV two-wheelers by two-fold. 

In July, the company announced mass production of lithium-ion cells by 2023, through the government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme. The company has also announced an investment of $500 million or Rs 4,000 for setting up a cell research and development facility in Bengaluru.