Deepinder Goyal's Zomato lays off 600 employees without any...

Zomato, the popular food delivery platform, has fired 600 customer support associates, Moneycontrol reported. The decision was reportedly taken within a year of hiring the employees. This move comes as the Deepinder Goyal-led company has witnessed slowing growth in its core food delivery vertical and mounting losses in its quick commerce arm, Blinkit. 

Reports suggest that Zomato had hired around 1,500 employees under its Zomato Associate Accelerator Program (ZAAP) a year ago in customer support roles, offering the chance to be elevated to roles across sales, operations, program management, support, supply chain, and category teams, within a year. However, a bulk of these contractual workers did not get renewals at the end of their tenures.

Meanwhile, the company has been increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to automate its customer support functions in a bid to cut costs. Zomato recently also launched Nugget - an AI-powered customer support platform for businesses across the globe. The company said that Nugget is currently powering over 15 million support interactions per month for Zomato, Blinkit, and Hyperpure. 

Zomato's last major round of layoffs came in December 2022, when it had sacked as many as 100 employees. The company currently has a market cap of Rs 1.83 lakh crore, as of April 1. The share price of the firm closed at Rs 203.35 on Tuesday. Last month, Zomato CEO Goyal invested USD 20 million in LAT Aerospace, a new startup co-founded by Surobhi Das, former Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Zomato.

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