Ola Krutrim lets go of 50 linguistics employees in latest round
It has affected roles include regional language specialists (Bengali, Malayalam, Punjabi)
Third round of layoffs this year as it has laid off over 200 employees so far this yea
Bhavish Aggarwal's Ola Krutrim Cuts 50 More Jobs in Its Third Layoff Round
Ola Krutrim, the AI venture led by Bhavish Aggarwal, has trimmed its workforce once again, letting go of about 50 people from its linguistics division. The company said the move was tied to the completion of its current data annotation phase and forms part of a broader restructuring effort
Ola Krutrim founder Bhavish Aggarwal
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Bhavish Aggarwal-led AI unicorn Ola Krutrim has reportedly laid off 50 employees from its linguistics team as a part of strategic restructuring process, according to a report published by The Economic Times.
The latest round has impacted team leads and transcribers working on regional languages including Bengali, Malayalam, and Punjabi. “The current phase of the data annotation project involving in-house linguistics has been successfully completed,” a spokesperson told ET.
This marks the third round of layoffs at Ola Krutrim this year. In July, the Bengaluru-based start-up has cut over 100 jobs from its linguistics team. And in June, it has fired dozens of employees as part of its “strategic realignment” efforts to build leaner teams.
So far, it has laid off nearly 200 employees this year. It is said that Krutrim’s linguistic team had approximately 600 employees before layoffs. Currently, it has been reduced to around 400.
Besides employees, the start-up has also seen a number of high-level exits. As many as six senior executives, including heads of AI data, cloud architecture, corporate finance, and software engineering, have quit, since April.
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Krutrim was founded in 2023 by Bhavish Aggarwal. It offers GPU-as-a-service, along with other multiple no-code platforms. In 2024, the AI start-up became a unicorn after raising $50 million in a funding round led by Z47.
Ola Krutrim's AI products, include Krutrim Cloud (its cloud platform) and large language model. These products are yet to gain traction, partly due to technology gaps. Its assistant app, Kruti, has seen about 207,000 downloads since its launch in June, according to media reports.
The company, which entered the unicorn club in January 2024 after raising around $75 million, counts Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners), the Sarin family, and other investors among its backers.
In December, Bhavish Aggarwal pledged a portion of his Ola Electric shares to secure debt financing for Krutrim through debentures. Reports later suggested the start-up was eyeing a fresh $300 million round, though it officially denied those talks.
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Looking ahead, Krutrim has laid out ambitious expansion goals — including scaling its data center capacity to 1 gigawatt by 2028 and committing up to $1.2 billion in investments over the coming years.
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