Oyo to layoff 600 employees as part of 'wide ranging' changes in organisation structure

Hospitality chain Oyo said on Saturday it is undertaking downsizing of staff and is letting go of 600 employees from its employee base of 3700.

However, the company said it will also go for hiring fresh staff.

The company said it is making 'wide ranging' changes in its organizational structure.

Oyo is downsizing its product and engineering teams, and the Oyo vacation homes teams, while it plans to add people to the partner relationship management and the business development teams.

The company said the downsizing in tech is also happening in teams that were developing pilots and proof of concepts such as in-app gaming, social content curation and patron facilitated content.

Oyo said members of projects that have now been 'successfully developed' and deployed such as ‘Partner SaaS’ are being either let go or are being redeployed in core product and tech areas such as AI driven pricing, ordering and payments.

The company said it has also reassessed its corporate headquarter base afresh and is merging congruent roles and flattening team structures where needed.

"We will be doing all that we can to ensure that most of the people we are having to let go, are gainfully employed. Every member of the Oyo team and I myself will proactively endorse the strength of each of these employees," said founder and group CEO Ritesh Agarwal.

"It is unfortunate that we are having to part ways with a lot of these talented individuals who have made valuable contributions to the company. As Oyo grows and a need for some of these roles emerges in the future, we commit to reaching out to them first and offering them the opportunity," he added.

The company said it will be adding 250 members primarily in its relationship management teams to ensure 'better' consumer and partner satisfaction and in business development teams to help scale up the number of hotels and homes on its platform.