Zomato Layoffs: Food delivery firm cuts up to 600 customer support jobs. Here’s why

Zomato Layoffs: Online food delivery platform Zomato cuts up to 600 customer support jobs within a year of taking them on board, reported the news portal Outlook Business, citing people aware of the development on Tuesday, April 1.

According to the report, Zomato's job cut move comes as the food delivery and quick commerce firm is facing a slowdown in growth in its core food delivery business and rising losses in its subsidiary Blinkit.

The company also leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to automate its artificial intelligence (AI) for customer support functions in order to reduce costs for the company.

LiveMint's queries sent to Zomato remain unanswered so far. Any response from the company will be included later in the story.

According to a Moneycontrol report, the food delivery firm hired nearly 1,500 employees for its vacancies in the customer support roles under the Zomato Associate Accelerator Program (ZAAP) one year ago.

Employee Compensation

The customer support employees who were fired received one month's salary as compensation and then were terminated without any notice period, reported the news portal, citing sources aware of the development.

They also said that the employees were fired based on poor performance and poor punctuality, among other things.

“A majority of employees hired under Zomato’s ZAAP program last year have been let go over the last week or so without any clear explanation,” a current customer support employee told the news portal.

They also mentioned that the layoffs have taken place across Gurugram and Hyderabad, as the fears rise amongst the existing employees over their existing jobs.

Zomato shares were trading 0.84 per cent higher at ₹203.20 ahead of the stock market close after Tuesday's trading session, compared to ₹201.50 at the previous market close.

Job Loss Woes on Reddit

Some social media users took to the Reddit platform to discuss the firing incident. One social media user who was allegedly fired from Zomato, along with 300 more employees, shared the experience with netizens.

A user named Brave_Role_6331 shared their experience with the r/Delhi community on how Zomato allegedly fired its employees without any warning or an opportunity to improve, according to a post shared seven days ago.

“I never thought I’d be writing this, but here we are. Today, I was fired from Zomato for what I can only describe as a ridiculous and unfair reason: being late by an average of just 28 minutes over the past three months. No warning, no opportunity to improve—just a cold termination, despite having excellent metrics, a great track record, and a strong presence on the floor,” said the Reddit user, according to the post.

Accepting the delays on their end, the social media user also alleged that Zomato treated its employees as “disposable” irrespective of their contribution to the daily workflow.

[Link to the Reddit post]