Food delivery app Zomato is laying off 13 per cent of its employees. Zomato has around 4,000 employees in different roles. The company has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic as several restaurants are not operating.

Beginning June there will be a “temporary” reduction in pay of up to 50 per cent for the entire organisation.

In an internal email shared with its employees, Zomato co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said that while lower cuts are being proposed for people with lower salaries, if an employee has already taken a voluntary cut which is equal or more than the proposed reduction, then they will not have to take the additional cut.

“We expect these cuts to be discontinued as soon as the economy starts getting back on track. I foresee (and hope) this to be around six months from now,’’ he said in the email.

Explaining the reasons behind the move, Goyal said that multiple aspects of the business had changed dramatically over the last couple of months and many of these changes were expected to be permanent.

Pointing out that while its business has been severely affected by the Covid lockdown, a large number of restaurants have already shut down permanently. Goyal expects the number of restaurants to shrink by 25-40 per cent over the next 6-12 months.

“All of this uncertainty inevitably needed us to re-define our business strategy. There’s no going back to the ‘normal’ — all we should focus on is building for the ‘new normal’,” Goyal said.