Ola’s Krutrim cuts 50 jobs in linguistics team: Report

Krutrim, the AI unit of Ola, has laid off around 50 employees from its linguistics team in its third round of job cuts since June, according to an ET report. Those affected include team leads and transcribers for regional languages such as Bengali, Malayalam, and Punjabi.

In total, more than 200 employees have left the company so far this year, including leadership exits. Earlier in July this year, Krutrim sacked more than 100 employees in its second round of layoffs.

The layoffs come as Krutrim works on its largest language model, Krutrim 3, which will be a multibillion-parameter model.

In an official statement to the media, the company said the cuts are part of a “strategic realignment” as it builds leaner teams to focus on its AI platform. It added that the current data annotation phase involving linguistics work has been completed.

Since April, at least six senior executives, including heads of AI data, software engineering, cloud architecture, and corporate finance, have quit. This follows over 20 earlier exits across levels in FY25.

Krutrim’s AI products, including Krutrim Cloud and its large language model offerings, have yet to gain traction due to technology gaps. Its AI assistant app Kruti has been downloaded 207,000 times since launching in June, according to SensorTower.

Krutrim has raised approximately $75 million and joined the unicorn club in January 2024. Its investors include Z47 (formerly Matrix), the Sarin Family, and others. In December last year, Aggarwal pledgedhis Ola Electric shares to secure debt funding through debenture issuance for Krutrim. Krutrim was also reportedly in talks to raise $300 million in a new funding round. However, the company denied it officially.

The company has also revealed plans to scale its data center capacity to 1 GW by 2028 and has committed up to $1.2 billion in funding over the next few years.

Recently, Krutrim also acquired BharatSahAIyak, a company focused on public-sector AI solutions, from technology consulting firm Samagra.