Online food delivery company Zomato has laid off more than 600 customer support executives within a year of hiring them. This decision comes at a time when the company is seeing growth in its food delivery business while its quick commerce subsidiary Blinkit is suffering losses. Employees Fired Without Notice According to a Moneycontrol report 1500 customer support executives were hired under the Zomato Associate Accelerator Program (ZAAP). Many employees were hoping for promotions after completing a year with the company but instead they were suddenly laid off. Most of them were not given contract renewals and were dismissed without any prior notice. The company gave reasons for poor performance disciplinary issues the increasing role of AI in customer support and cost-cutting measures as the reasons for these layoffs. Use Of AI On Customer Support Zomato is aggressively focusing on automating its customer support services using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Recently it introduced an AI-powered customer support platform named as Nugget which is now handling a major portion of the company’s customer services interactions. The platform is already being used for 1.5 crore customer interactions per month. In terms of financial performance Zomato’s net profit for Q3 of FY 2024-25 fell by 57% dropping to Rs 59 crore fromRs 138 crore in the same period last year. Goldman Sachs Bought Zomato Shares Banking and financial services major Goldman Sachs on Friday bought shares of state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and Zomato worth Rs 281 crore through open market transactions. US-based Goldman Sachs also acquired 60.07 lakh scrips of online food delivery aggregator Zomato the data showed.  The shares were picked up in the price range of Rs 199.5-4176.25 apiece taking the combined deal value to Rs 280.96 crore. (With Inputs From PTI)