Zomato closes Hyderabad support centre, affecting about 240 employees
Zomato has shut its Hyderabad customer-support centre and is consolidating remaining in-house support in Gurugram, while moving work to specialist vendors and AI-led automation. Affected employees are being offered four months’ pay plus August salary, with benefits continuing until March 31, 2027.
What happened
Zomato shut its Hyderabad customer support centre, affecting about 240 employees, as it consolidates remaining in-house support in Gurugram and shifts work to
Key facts
- Around 240 employees affected
- Four months' pay plus August salary
- Benefits continue until March 31, 2027
- Close to 600 support associates laid off in April 2025
- Around 1,500 people hired under ZAAP
- Nugget handled around 15 million monthly interactions
- Nugget resolved up to 80% of customer queries
Why this matters
The move signals rising strategic value in customer-service automation and specialist BPO partnerships, potentially creating partnership or acquisition opportunities around scalable AI support capabilities.
What to watch
- Customer complaint volumes, app-store ratings, social-media escalation rates, and refund-related sentiment after the transition.
- Changes in Zomato's disclosed employee costs, adjusted EBITDA margins, and outsourced-service expenses.
- Vendor hiring activity, BPO contract announcements, and job postings for AI operations or customer-support quality roles.
- Any increase in regulator, consumer-protection, or labor scrutiny related to automation, layoffs, or grievance handling.
- Evidence of similar consolidation across Blinkit, restaurant support, trust-and-safety, or corporate operations.
- Expand contracts with customer-experience BPO vendors and define service-level agreements for refunds, delivery failures, and high-value users.
- Deploy AI agents more broadly for order-status, cancellation, payment, and first-level complaint workflows while retaining human escalation teams.
- Centralize support analytics, quality assurance, and policy governance in Gurugram.
- Use severance and extended benefits to limit employee-relations fallout and reduce reputational risk.
- Track whether support savings are redirected toward quick-commerce expansion, delivery-partner incentives, or profitability targets.