Zomato to lay off 240 staff as it shuts Hyderabad customer-support operations
Zomato is consolidating remaining in-house customer support in Gurugram and shifting more work to external partners. Affected Hyderabad employees will receive four months’ pay, extended insurance and outplacement support.
What happened
Zomato is shutting its Hyderabad customer-support operation and laying off about 240 staff, consolidating remaining in-house support in Gurugram while shifting
Key facts
- Around 240 employees laid off
- Around 250 employees cited in an earlier report
- Four months' pay for affected employees
- Benefits continue until March 31, 2027
- Around 600 customer-support employees laid off in April last year
- 86 facilities inspected in Maharashtra
- 14 food-establishment licences suspended
- 60 improvement notices issued
Why this matters
Zomato’s move underscores the strategic value of scalable outsourced-support capabilities and potential partnership opportunities with customer-service platform providers.
What to watch
- Changes in customer-support response times, complaint volumes, refund rates and app-store ratings after the transition.
- Evidence of rising customer churn, lower order frequency or increased promotional spending relative to Swiggy.
- Management commentary on adjusted EBITDA, employee costs and outsourcing expenses in upcoming results.
- Further layoffs, office closures or hiring freezes in operations, technology or corporate functions.
- Vendor service-level failures, data-security incidents or public backlash from affected employees.
- Shift additional customer-support volumes to outsourced partners with tighter cost-per-contact targets.
- Expand AI-led self-service, chat automation and automated refund workflows to reduce human-agent demand.
- Concentrate retained escalation, fraud, merchant and high-value customer teams in Gurugram.
- Review other back-office locations and overlapping corporate roles for consolidation opportunities.
- Use severance and transition support to limit reputational fallout and labor-relations risk.