India’s Ola will cut around 200 engineering jobs to reduce redundancies in its two core businesses of ride-hailing and electric vehicle manufacturing, the SoftBank Group-backed company said on Monday. The company said it is focused on being a “vertically integrated mobility company” and is centralizing operations to create a structure to consolidate relevant roles and functions. “Ola is strengthening its game in two-wheelers, four-wheelers, SAIL research and manufacturing, while also building common capabilities and synergies across all operations,” the company said in a statement.
Ola said that for this, as part of a “recruitment influx” for roles in vehicle engineering, sourcing, product management and data science, Ola will increase its engineering workforce over the next 18 months from about 2,000 currently to 5,000. is planned.
Ola, which overtook 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 over 1,400 vehicles after a fire broke out in one.
The company also postponed plans to go public in the first half of this year, possibly due to market volatility and weak listings of other domestic start-ups.
Last month, it was reported that Ola Electric plans to launch its first four wheeler electric vehicle in the Indian market in 2024. The company’s first electric car is claimed to offer a range of over 500km on a single charge and go from 0 to 0. -100 kmph in under 4 seconds. As mentioned earlier, the firm entered the EV space last year with the launch of the Ola S1 and S1 Pro electric scooters.
© Thomson Reuters 2022
