3 days Ago
Mumbai, April 1: Zomato, India's leading food delivery giant, has reportedly laid off around 600 employees from without any notice. The Zomato layoffs decision was reportedly taken by the company for using AI instead of humans for the customer support roles. Zomato intend to automate its customer service with AI platform "Nugget".
The staff was laid off citing that they delivered poor performance and punctuality. The Zomato layoffs were reportedly initiated by the company amid experiencing slow growth in the food delivery business and suffering losses in its quick commerce unit. Zomato reduced its workforce after weeks of launching "Nugget", an in-house artificial intelligence platform that resolving the customer problems.
It was reportedly developed over three years. Nugget is an AI-powered platform that is capable of handling multiple queries of the customers. It can handle more than 15 million monthly interactions across the Blinkit and Hyperpure platforms.
The AI platform can deliver up to 80% of the customer queries without needing any human intervention. Zomato reportedly hired around 1,500 employees under ZAAP (Zomato Associate Accelerator Programme) for the roles of customer support. Within a year, Zomato provided these employees potential to move to different roles such as support, operations, sales, supply chain and programme management.
But, most of the employees did not have their contract renewed after the contract ended. The ZAAP employees, located in Hyderabad and Gurugram, were asked to resign from their positions without getting any formal layoffs notice, said the Zomato staff. Zomato Layoffs As per the report, the affected workers were offered a month’s salary as compensation and terminated without any notice period.
The company cited reasons such as poor performance and poor punctuality, among others, for these layoffs. In a statement to Moneycontrol, one of the current customer support associates who did not want to be identified said: “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. This has taken place across their offices in Gurugram and Hyderabad.
The atmosphere has become really tense.” Employees have also reportedly claimed that Zomato's push to automate its customer support services has resulted in job redundancies in these roles. Before this, Zomato's last major layoff occurred in December 2022, when around 100 employees—nearly 4% of its workforce—were dismissed across departments such as product, tech, catalogue and marketing.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 01, 2025 05:19 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com ).
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