Ola-funded artificial intelligence company Krutrim has laid off about 50 members of its language team as part of a bigger restructuring process. The impacted are the heads of teams and experts who handle languages such as Bengali, Malayalam, and Punjabi, The Economic Times reported.
This is the third set of lay offs the business has undertaken in 2025. The first cuts were launched in June, followed by a bigger round in July that impacted more than 100 people. The recent move has witnessed Krutrim reduce its linguistics employees by nearly 200 workers this year.
A spokesperson revealed that the latest restructuring was after finishing its current in-house data annotation cycle. It is constructing “leaner teams” and refining resources for upcoming projects.
Krutrim was established in 2023 and turned into a unicorn in early 2024 after raising $50 million from Z47 (earlier Matrix Partners India). It is working on several ambitious initiatives like developing its own AI chips in 2026, building cloud infrastructure, and scaling up big language models. It also launched an AI assistant named Kruti earlier this year and recently partnered with Cloudera to support analytics for Ola’s ride-hailing unit.
The shift is happening with Indian technology companies investing heavily in AI. Reliance Industries has lately announced joint ventures with Meta and Google to enhance the use of AI, while global players like OpenAI are about to expand their presence in India.
For Krutrim, the challenge is how to reconcile its reduction in personnel with the progress in initiatives such as chip design and cloud services, which are the pillars of its long-term vision.
