Hospitality firm OYO has laid off around 300 employees mainly from renovation and operations departments, according to sources in know of the matter.
This has been done in order to build a long-term sustainable business as the company has introduced some operational changes aligned with the current business realities, the sources said.
This is in line with the company's efforts to drive technology-enabled synergies and realign some business functions to other verticals, leading to some redundancies across a few functions, they added.
When contacted, an OYO spokesperson said, "We have done no significant restructuring at this point in time. There are some localised actions basis change in business models and our move towards product and technology to serve our partners and customers keeping in mind the current business realities."
According to the sources, apart from the usual benefits such as notice pay, leave encashment, earned incentives, and gratuity, the employees have also been given an option to surrender and offer cancellation of 25 percent of the invested deeply discounted ESOPs granted in June 2020. This is in lieu of cash benefit equal to 25 percent of their March 2020 drawn fixed salary, they added.
In April, the hospitality firm, which had around 10,000 employees at that time, had asked some of its staff in India to go on leave with limited benefits from May 4 for four months. It had also asked all employees in the country to accept a cut in their fixed salaries by 25 percent due to the impact of the COVID-19 on the hospitality industry.
In another development, OYO Founder and Group CEO Ritesh Agarwal, said the Hospitality firm is recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and has around $1 billion to fund operations.
In a fireside chat with OYO board member Troy Alstead, 27-year-old Agarwal said the company has had a strong recovery over the last few months.
"... the company has good amount of cash, we have continued to hold on to close to a billion dollars of cash... at the same time, we've been very disciplined in making sure that we can respond to the crisis in a good way to try and ensure that we can come out of it at the right time," Agarwal said.
(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)
Edited by Megha Reddy
Link : https://yourstory.com/2020/12/oyo-layoffs-300-employees-ritesh-agarwal
Author :- Press Trust of India ( )
December 09, 2020 at 10:58AM
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