Data-engineering firm Innodata India Pvt Ltd terminated nearly 550 employees in India on 26 October 2026, with workers reporting that company laptops and HR portal access were disabled during the workday before termination emails arrived on personal IDs.
An India Today-reviewed termination email stated that employment would end on 26 October 2026 due to “a ramp-down in the relevant business assignment” the employee had been hired for. Staff said the day began as a routine Monday, with people logging in and marking attendance before systems started going offline one by one.
The company’s HR portal reportedly recorded 26 October as the “date of resignation” and “last working day” for affected workers, prompting concerns that the structure was designed to avoid statutory severance obligations.
The job losses were not limited to India. Posts on Reddit from people identifying themselves as Innodata employees described layoffs on the same day in the Philippines, including workers linked to the company’s MUPSL project. Innodata has not publicly confirmed the overall scale of the reported cuts or named the client whose project was ramped down.
Innodata, which is listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker INOD, saw its share price tumble roughly 26% on 27 October after the layoff reports spread, with investors reading the abrupt and location-specific nature of the cuts as a signal that the firm may have lost a major AI client. Pre-market trading had already shown the stock down 16% before US markets opened.
The incident has reopened the broader debate about termination practices at India’s AI data-services firms, where several companies have scaled rapidly on short-cycle contract work tied to US-based generative AI clients.
