Ola to Cut 10 Percent Engineering Jobs Across Ride-Hailing, EV Businesses

India’s Ola will cut about 200 engineering jobs to reduce redundancy across its two main businesses of ride-hailing and electric vehicle manufacturing, the SoftBank Group-backed company said on Monday. The company said it is focussed on being a “vertically integrated mobility company” and is centralising operations to build a structure to strengthen relevant roles and functions. “Ola is building on common capabilities and synergies across functions as it strengthens its play across two-wheelers, four-wheelers, cell research and manufacturing,” the company said in a statement.

To that end, said Ola, it plans to boost its engineering workforce to 5,000 over the next 18 months from around 2,000 currently, as part of an “influx of hiring” for roles in vehicle engineering, sourcing, product management and data science.

Ola, which pipped Uber to take a majority share of India’s ride-hailing market, started manufacturing e-scooters last year and plans to start producing electric cars in 2024.

However, its scooter business came under scrutiny earlier this year when Ola recalled more than 1,400 of the vehicles after one of them caught fire.

The company also postponed plans to go public in the first half of this year, possibly due to volatility in the market and lacklustre listings of other domestic start-ups.

Last month, it was reported that Ola Electric planned to launch its first four-wheeler electric vehicle in the Indian market in 2024. The first electric car from the company is claimed to offer a range of over 500km on a single charge and go from 0-100kmph within 4 seconds. As previously mentioned, the firm made its entry into the EV space last year with the launch of Ola S1 and S1 Pro electric scooters.

© Thomson Reuters 2022