Uber lays off 10-15% of its staff in India

New Delhi| Mumbai: Uber has laid off 10-15% of its India employees as part of a global retrenchment drive announced on Monday, three people with knowledge of the matter said.These terminations will impact all of Uber’s businesses in the country, including its online food-delivery vertical under UberEats, they said. Uber has 350-400 employees in India. The San Francisco-based ride-hailing major had emailed employees saying it would cull jobs of 350 people across the world with 70% of that in the United States and Canada.Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is scheduled to visit India later this month. But sources in the know said his visit may not be directly connected to the layoffs. Uber India constitutes about 2% of Uber’s revenue, but contributes to a large part of its expenses, which makes it a target for cost cutting, said one of the people. “Conference rooms were booked in the Gurgaon office in preparation of the firings,” said one of the people. Within the India arm of Uber, there is very little clarity over which department will take the biggest hit.The latest round of downsizing takes Uber’s total retrenchment count to 1,200, which is 1% of Uber’s total staff strength.This is the third round of layoffs at the transportation major which went public earlier this year and has been on a drive to cut losses in the backdrop of a disappointing IPO. The first job cuts happened in July when staff from the marketing and analytics team were let go.The next set took place in September, which did not affect India. However, product and technology positions were eliminated back then.In India, according to one of the people mentioned, the policy team has been shrinking consistently and most of the work is being outsourced to one of the big Indian law firms. Uber did not respond to a detailed questionnaire sent by ET, until press-time on Tuesday.Earlier this month, ET reported that Uber had restructured its corporate holdings and brought its India business, including food delivery, under Uber India Systems. The rides business and Uber’s food delivery arm were earlier part of Uber BV, a private limited liability company registered in the Netherlands. The restructured business operations went live on October 1. At the time, two top UberEats executives — India chief Bhavik Rathod and head of central operations Deepak Reddy — had resigned as well. Uber has, for the past year, been trying to sell its food delivery business, UberEats.

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