Uber sacks 350 employees globally; jobs impacted in India too

Ride-hailing firm Uber has fired 350 of its global workforce across a variety of teams within the organisation, of which less than 10% are based in India. The cab aggregator has done this as a part of its third and final phase of global austerity drive this year.

The layoffs will affect Uber's businesses in the country, including the company's online food-delivery vertical under UberEats.

Uber had sent a mail to its employees informing them about the termination of 350 of its staff across the world with 70% of them being in the United States and Canada, according to a report in The Economic Times.

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Although Uber did confirm the global layoffs to the news daily, it did not comment on the specifics.

Meanwhile, the company's CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will visit India later this month. However, the sources in the know told the news daily that his visit may not be related directly to the job losses in the country.

The overall employee strength of Uber India is reportedly around 2,600.

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Uber India composes around 2% of Uber's total earnings but constitutes a considerable part of the company's expenses. This makes its India business a target for cost-cutting, the report stated.

The latest round of retrenchment drive takes Uber's total downsizing tally to 1,200, 1% of the company's total employee strength. This is the third round of terminations at Uber which came out with a much disappointing IPO earlier this year and has been on a cost-cutting drive.

The first round of lay-offs came about in July when the company sacked the marketing and analytics team. The next one happened in September, but did not have any impact on India.

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