Social media abuzz about toxic work culture at Ola Krutrim after employee's 'suicide'

Social media has been abuzz with posts about toxic work culture at Ola's AI arm Krutrim after a machine learning engineer at the firm allegedly took his life on May 8.

The news of the death of Nikhil Somwanshi, who had worked at Krutrim since August last year, first emerged in a Reddit post on Thursday in which it was alleged that he took his own life.

The Reddit post, which alleged that Somwanshi was under immense work pressure before he took the extreme step, went viral, sparking a social media outrage over alleged toxic work culture at Ola Krutrim.

Ola in a statement to ET said Somwanshi was on personal leave at the time of the incident.

According to the company, Somwanshi had reached out to his manager on April 8, expressing that he needed rest, and was promptly granted personal time off.

Later, on April 17, he shared that he was feeling better but would benefit from additional rest, and his leave was extended accordingly, Ola said.

“We are extending our full support to Nikhil’s family and our employees during this time of grief. We are also in contact with the relevant authorities and will continue to offer our assistance as needed,” Ola said.

Ola did not answer specific queries from ET on the work environment at the company.

A former Ola Krutrim employee ET spoke to alleged, “They are doing utterly mediocre work with incompetent management and leadership. Toxicity is through the roof, as is nepotism.”

ET could not reach Somwanshi's family for comment.

Somwanshi was a management postgraduate in business analytics from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), as per his LinkedIn profile. Before joining Krutrim, he was a natural language processing engineer at IISc as a part of a six-month internship during the first half of 2024.

IISc did not respond to ET's request for a comment until press time Sunday.

Krutrim has seen close to a dozen junior to senior management-level exits in the past year even as it doubled down on AI initiatives, ET had reported in April. The exits included applied AI director Ashish Kumar, who was looking at agentic AI for the enterprise application, Vipul Shah, who was vice president-products, Gautam Bhargava, who was vice president and head of AI engineering, and Ravi Jain, who was business head.

Please note: Tele MANAS provides free, 24/7 mental health support to individuals through a national toll-free helpline (14416 / 1800-89-14416). If you have suicidal thoughts, please seek help.