Zomato cuts 240 jobs as it closes Hyderabad customer-support operations
Zomato has shut its Hyderabad customer-support operation, laying off about 240 employees and consolidating remaining in-house support in Gurugram while shifting more work to specialist outsourcing partners. Affected staff are set to receive four months’ pay, extended insurance and outplacement support.
What happened
Zomato has laid off about 240 Hyderabad customer-support employees and shut the operation, consolidating remaining in-house support in Gurugram while
Key facts
- 240 employees laid off
- Around 250 employees reported by Economic Times
- Four months' pay
- Customer-support work shifted over the past six months
- Around 600 support employees laid off in April last year
- Medical insurance and counselling until March 31, 2027
- 14 food-establishment licences suspended
- 86 facilities inspected
- 60 improvement notices
Why this matters
Zomato’s move creates an opening to evaluate specialist support-outsourcing partnerships and consolidation opportunities across high-volume service operations.
What to watch
- Quarterly employee-cost and adjusted EBITDA-margin commentary indicating realized restructuring savings.
- Changes in customer-support response times, app-store ratings, refund/compensation expense or reported customer complaints.
- New outsourcing-partner contracts, further office closures or additional corporate-function layoffs.
- Management disclosures on AI automation, chatbot containment rates or reduced support-contact volumes.
- Competitive service initiatives from Swiggy or other delivery platforms that make service quality a stronger retention lever.
- Complete employee separation payments, insurance extensions and outplacement support while managing reputational risk.
- Transition customer-support workflows, knowledge bases and escalation queues to Gurugram and outsourcing partners.
- Set tighter vendor service-level agreements covering response time, first-contact resolution, customer satisfaction, fraud handling and escalation quality.
- Redeploy savings toward automation, AI-assisted support and self-service tools rather than rebuilding internal support capacity.
- Monitor social-media sentiment, app ratings, refund rates and delivery-partner/restaurant complaint volumes during the transition.