Indian conglomerate Reliance slashed over 42,000 jobs last financial year | TechCrunch
Reliance, India’s largest conglomerate, reduced its workforce by 11%, or more than 42,000 people, in the financial year ended March 2024.
The conglomerate also slowed hiring, bringing on board about 171,000 people in the financial year, lower than the around 263,000 people it hired a year earlier, according to its annual report. The company said more than 143,000 employees opted for “voluntary separations.”
Reliance employs a large workforce at its various businesses, which range from India’s largest retail chain to the country’s top telecom network. Reliance Retail accounts for the majority of personnel among the company’s verticals, with about 207,000 employees at the end of the financial year, but that number was lower than its previous headcount of about 246,000 a year earlier. “The retail industry typically has a high employee turnover rate, especially in store operations,” the company wrote.
The layoffs come as Reliance Retail, which raised $1.85 billion at a $100 billion valuation last year, is seeing revenue growth slow down. The unit reported a modest 7% increase in revenue in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, falling significantly short of the 15%-20% increase analysts had expected. Reliance Retail also opened only 82 new stores in the quarter, a sharp decline from the average of 740 stores per quarter in fiscal year 2023.
India’s top three IT services companies, TCS, Wipro and Infosys, slashed more than 63,750 jobs in the last financial year, reflecting wider global trends.
Natural language AI assistants tend to be excellent English speakers, and passable in other tongues — but if you are one of the millions who fluidly switch between two languages…
Reliance, India’s largest conglomerate, reduced its workforce by 11%, or more than 42,000 people, in the financial year ended March 2024.
The Palmer Luckey-founded defense startup wants to become a serious rival to longstanding kingpins, and has been clocking some big wins.
The satellite is designed to complement data provided by existing astronomical efforts such as that of the famed Hubble Telescope.
YouTube is testing an integration with Google Gemini to help creators brainstorm video ideas, titles and thumbnails. The Google-owned company announced the launch of the new Brainstorm with Gemini feature…
Last year’s investor dreams of a strong 2024 IPO pipeline have faded, if not fully disappeared, as we settle in to the second half of the year. This year delivered…
Techstars is cutting 17% of its staff and will end its $80 million J.P. Morgan-backed AdvancingCities program once the fund is completely deployed.
Made by Google 2024 kicks off at 10 a.m. PT on August 13. Get ready for a slew of new hardware, including the Pixel 9 and a new foldable.
Just three months after Maven’s public launch, Kenneth Stanley — the former OpenAI researcher who co-founded the social media platform designed to facilitate serendipitous interactions — is stepping down. Stanley…
With the arrival of ChatGPT’s new Advanced Voice Mode, which offers nearly real-time, realistic interactions, Appfigures expects growth to continue in the months to come.
The U.K.’s internet regulator Ofcom has published an open letter to social media platforms raising concerns about the use of their tools being used to incite violence.
The $79 K2 has long been one of Keychron’s bestselling mechanical keyboards. As with all of the company’s K-line boards, it offers a relatively no-frills experience but provides all of…
Facebook creators are being given a new option that will help them avoid jail — “Facebook jail,” that is — upon their first violation, and at various times after. In…
Featured Article
A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs
The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the…
Hiya, folks, welcome to TechCrunch’s regular AI newsletter. This week in AI, OpenAI lost another co-founder. John Schulman, who played a pivotal role in the development of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered…
As has been the case with Nothing’s other handsets, there are a few hoops required to purchase the device in the U.S.
Digital transformation — the process of transforming outdated apps and processes with cloud technologies and digital workflows — can be a risky undertaking. In 2023, Harvard Business Review reported that…
Napkin wants to use generative AI to make turning text into visualizations as easy as clicking on a button and customizing the results.
Security researchers found a dozen vulnerabilities in 5G baseband chips found in phones made by Google, OPPO, OnePlus, Motorola, and Samsung.
Most startups are looking to solve a problem inside a business, but Bandana, a New York City-based startup, has a different goal. It wants to help people at the lower…
Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) planned $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks is one step closer to completion — the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has confirmed that the deal…
Ride-hail giant Lyft will pilot a new feature called Price Lock that will let a rider purchase a monthly subscription “that caps the price for a specific route at a…
Audible, the audiobook company owned by Amazon, announced on Wednesday that it is testing an AI-powered search feature to assist users in narrowing down their audiobook search. Starting today, select…
In a sign that big tech companies are ready and willing to shell out cash for database tech, Neon, a startup building an open source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres,…
The ex-Clubhouse, Netflix employees raised $1.65M for an app that combines social media, networking, and dating.
New York-based fintech Payoneer has acquired Skuad, a Singapore-based global HR and payroll startup, for $61 million in cash, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Payoneer said it could also pay…
Elon Musk’s X is being taken to court in Ireland for using Europeans’ data to train AI models without asking for their consent.
Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com, has launched a new AI tool designed to help bloggers write more clearly and succinctly.
Cybersecurity remains a white-hot space for investors. In the latest example of that demand, EQT has bought a majority stake in Acronis, a security company that specializes in data protection,…
