Ride-hailing firm, Uber plans to layoff 3700 employees working in customer support and recruiting teams globally, approximately 14% of the workforce. The company’s CEO will forgo the base salary for the rest of the year.
Restrictions on movement have seen Uber suffer revenue shortages as countries continue to enforce lockdown. For instance, Uber’s global gross bookings are down 80% with the real impact to be revealed during the release of financial results.
In Africa, Egypt has been the biggest casualty losing about 40 percent of staff with an additional 46 countries affected by the job cuts. Egypt’s population presented a lucrative market for ride-hailing firms seeing that it was one of Uber’s top ten markets.
Analysts opine that social distancing measures such as night curfew and closure of mosques have hurt Egypt’s taxis revenues and traffic.
Uber’s food delivery platform, Uber Eats also plans to exit seven markets across the world, with the company reiterating that the changes are not in any way related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The markets in context are Eqypt, Saudi Arabia, Romania, Ukraine, Honduras, Uruguay, and the Czech Republic. The exits will take effect from 4th June 2020.
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