Ola Said to Lay Off Nearly 350 Employees Ahead of IPO

With a view to become more nimble and have a sharper focus on growth and profitability, ride-hailing platform Ola has decided to restructure and redesign the company, starting with trimming its 4,500-strong workforce by 5-8 percent which will be nearly 350 employees, company sources told IANS on Friday. The move is seen as part of the mobility platform's aim to turn profitable and go public in the next 18-24 months.

The sources added that the company is also moving some employees to other verticals like Ola Electric, Ola Foods and Ola Financial Services as part of the organizational restructuring.

In a statement, a company spokesperson said that over the past couple of years, Ola has grown its core mobility business and introduced new business verticals such as financial services, food, public transport technology, and electric mobility.

With a view to become more nimble and have a sharper focus on growth and profitability, we are redesigning the organisation to build a structure that strengthens and leverages our local and global scale and enables faster decision making across all of Ola's group companies," said the spokesperson.

Founded in 2011 by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, Ola currently offers its services over 250 cities in India, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

The Ola app enables convenience and transparency for hundreds of millions of consumers and over 2 million driver-partners.

Our organisational redesign aims to rightsize all our operations as well as leverage skills sets and experience of mobility employees in available positions in new business verticals," the spokesperson added.

In its financial year 2019, Ola increased its revenue by 16 percent to Rs. 2,155 crores while its losses went down by nearly 50 percent to Rs. 1,158 crores in comparison of FY2018.

The ride-hailing firm launched its operations in the UK starting with Cardiff in August 2018.

Ola has been steadily expanding across the country to now serving millions of users across Birmingham, Liverpool, Exeter, Reading, Bristol, Bath, Coventry, and Warwick.