Zomato lays off 13 per cent employees, amid coronavirus COVID-19 crisis

Amid the coronavirus COVID-19 crisis, Zomato on Friday laid off 13 per cent employees citing not “enough work for all” and unable to offer “our colleagues a challenging work environment”.

An official statement read, “Multiple aspects of our business have changed dramatically over the last couple of months and many of these changes are expected to be permanent. While we continue to build a more focused Zomato, we do not foresee having enough work for all our employees. We owe all our colleagues a challenging work environment, but we won’t be able to offer that to 13 per cent of our workforce going forward.”

The statement added that the company will hold video calls with impacted employees to walk them through the next steps and help find them jobs as soon as possible. “We are going to assure them that we stand by them, and will financially and emotionally support them to the fullest possible extent,” further read the statement.

The statement also read, “All our employees who no longer have any work at Zomato, will continue to be with us at 50 per cent salary for the next six months. During this time, outside of the handover period of 1-2 weeks, we expect these folks to spend 100 per cent of their time and energy towards looking for jobs outside of Zomato.”

It added, “Some impacted employees work with us through manpower agencies and not directly on our payroll. We are going to help these agencies support these employees with two months of severance (vs. 15 days of contractual obligation). Each person leaving us will also be allowed to keep their Zomato issued laptops and phones (if any). Previously allocated ESOPs will continue to vest during this period of 6 months, as all these people will remain on our payroll with reduced pay.”