Layoff: Bengaluru’s startup company fired 90 percent of its employees, the reason being AI; learn why.

Bengaluru based startup ‘Dukaan’ has given a big blow to its employees. E-commerce startup company ‘Dukaan’ has removed 90 percent of its employees and replaced them with AI chatbots. The founder and CEO of the startup company Sumit Shah said on Tuesday that the AI ​​chatbot has reduced the company’s cost significantly, due to which the company has decided to hire employees to make profits.

CEO Shah said in a tweet that we had to lay off 90 percent of our support team members because of the AI ​​chatbot. He also said that it was a difficult decision but it was necessary to do and claimed that the resolution time has been reduced from two hours to three minutes, which has reduced the cost of support services by 85 percent. Shah justified the retrenchment saying the decision was in the interest of the customers.

Some people on social media are criticizing the decision of this company a lot. Defending this, Sumit Shah said that considering the state of the economy, startups are giving priority to making profits instead of becoming unicorns and we are doing the same.

However, the store has announced layoffs in some departments as well as vacancies in other teams. Which is related to AI, product design. Talking about the earlier layoffs, the company has not only reduced the number of its employees in the customer support team. In September last year, the startup had laid off around 23 employees, followed by over 50 in the early months of 2023.

The Indian startup is not the only company integrating AI to improve shop efficiency and reduce costs. In May 2023, US companies announced a record-breaking 80,089 job cuts. Of which 3,900 were due to AI specifically in the tech sector.