OYO lays off around 300 employees

NEW DELHI: 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 of 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 per cent of the invested deeply discounted ESOPs granted in June 2020. This is in lieu of cash benefit equal to 25 per cent 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 per cent due to the impact of the COVID-19 on the hospitality industry.