Data engineering and artificial intelligence services firm Innodata has laid off nearly 550 employees in India, according to employee accounts first reported by India Today and carried by People Matters and Latestly. Job cuts were also reported among the company's employees in the Philippines on the same day, Monday, October 26, 2026.
Source: People Matters
Employees said the day began as a regular Monday, with staff logging in and recording their attendance before starting work. By lunchtime, workers in India had started losing access to their laptops and official accounts, they said.
“One by one, we started losing access to our official devices. Laptops were logged out, and official IDs deactivated,” an employee based in Delhi told India Today, in remarks carried by People Matters. The employee said workers contacted their managers and HR teams for clarification while many were themselves trying to understand what was happening.
As uncertainty spread, employees said they created a WhatsApp group to trace colleagues who had been affected. “As panic spread, we opened a WhatsApp group and tried to trace our colleague who've met with the same fate. By late evening, we had almost 500 people, all clueless and in a state of panic,” the employee said. Termination emails began arriving on personal email accounts later in the day, and workers said they could no longer access the company's HR and payroll systems to download payslips and other employment documents. “There has been no calls from HR, and we didn't receive the chance to even download our payslips and other important documents as even the access of the HR payroll app was revoked,” the employee said.
What the termination email said
A termination email reviewed by India Today stated that the employee's employment would end on October 26, 2026 because of a reduction in the business assignment for which they had been hired. “This is to formally inform you that, due to the ramp-down of the business assignment for which you were engaged, the Company has decided to discontinue your employment with InnoData India Pvt. Ltd., effective 26 October 2026, which will be your last working day,” the email said. It added: “This decision has been taken in view of the prevailing business and operational requirements and is not related to your individual performance.”
Source: People Matters
The communication outlined a full and final settlement process under which a demand draft had been prepared and the original would be handed over after the employee returned company assets. Latestly reported that affected personnel were instructed to return company assets to the Noida facility, with settlement details issued via demand drafts contingent on that handover.
Source: Latestly
Philippines cuts also reported; company yet to confirm total
Job losses were also reported among Innodata employees in the Philippines. Posts on Reddit from people identifying themselves as company employees described layoffs on the same day, including among workers linked to the MUPSL project, and some attributed the cuts to a decline in work from a major client. People Matters noted that those individual accounts do not independently establish the total number affected or confirm whether the same reason applied across locations.
Innodata has not publicly confirmed the overall scale of the reported layoffs. For affected workers, the immediate concerns are understanding the reasons for their termination, retrieving employment records and payslips, and completing the exit and settlement process, the reports said.