Zomato to shut Hyderabad support centre, affecting 250–300 jobs

Zomato plans to close its Hyderabad customer-support centre and consolidate operations in Gurugram, affecting an estimated 250–300 third-party support workers. The move follows wider use of its Nugget AI platform, which the company says has automated 85% of support coverage and cut annual support costs by 55%.

— Source publishedMon, 31 Aug, 2026, 19:29 IST·First seen Mon, 31 Aug, 2026, 19:42 IST·Source Business Standard · Companies

What happened

Zomato will shut its Hyderabad support centre, affecting 250-300 third-party customer-support workers, while consolidating operations in Gurugram. Its AI

Key facts

  • 250-300 customer support jobs affected
  • Nugget handled more than 2.2 billion conversations
  • 85% automation coverage
  • 99.9% uptime SLA
  • 55% reduction in customer support costs
  • Annual support costs reduced from approximately $20 million to $9 million
  • More than 15 million conversations per month
  • Nearly 600 support executives laid off last year

Why this matters

Zomato’s consolidation highlights the strategic value of scalable AI customer-support platforms, making automation capabilities and integration-ready support assets more relevant partnership or acquisition targets.

What to watch

  • Confirmation of closure timing, severance or redeployment terms, and the identity of affected third-party vendors.
  • Any increase in customer complaints related to refunds, missing orders, safety incidents or inability to reach human support.
  • Reported changes in customer-support response time, repeat-contact rate, cancellation/refund rates and customer satisfaction.
  • Further workforce reductions or support-centre consolidation at Zomato, Blinkit or associated vendor operations.
  • Management disclosure of AI-driven cost savings, margin expansion or additional Nugget adoption metrics.
  • Labor-department inquiries, political statements, worker protests or legal claims tied to the layoffs.
  • Complete Hyderabad centre wind-down and transfer residual support, training and escalation workflows to Gurugram.
  • Renegotiate or reduce third-party customer-support vendor capacity as automated ticket resolution rises.
  • Deploy Nugget AI more deeply in merchant support, delivery-partner queries, refunds, order modifications and internal operations.
  • Track AI containment, repeat-contact rates, refund leakage, complaint volumes and customer-satisfaction metrics to validate savings.
  • Position lower support costs as evidence of operating leverage in future earnings communication.