Founder and CEO of e-commerce start-up Dukaan, Suumit Shah on Monday said that the company has laid off 90 per cent of its staff, replacing them with an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. In a tweet thread, Shah explained the rationale behind the decision, saying that the company is going to focus on profitability as the customer support costs have been reduced by 85 per cent, and resolution time went down from over two hours to three minutes after the AI chatbot came in.
"We had to lay off 90 per cent of our support team because of this AI chatbot. Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely," Shah tweeted.
"Given the state of economy, startups are prioritising "profitability" over striving to become "unicorns", and so are we," he added.
Several Twitter users criticised the tweet, deeming it insensitive.
In his explanation, Shah introduced Lina, the AI assistant that effectively replaces generic and delayed responses, addresses limited resource availability, and improves communication. Following a series of 12 tweets, he also said that the company is actively hiring for various positions.
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When questioned by a Twitter user about the support offered to the laid-off staff, he requested them to refer to his LinkedIn post, emphasizing the difficulty of the decision.
"As expected, 'someone' will get offended on behalf of 'someone else', so I had this reply ready: Assistance ke bare mein jab Linkedin pe post karunga tab dekh lena mere dost, yahaan Twitter pe log "profitability" dekhte hai "sympathy" nahi", Shah tweeted.
"Laying off is never a pleasant experience, why is the need to proclaim and be proud about it," a Twitter user wrote.
This comes after Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar recently dismissed concerns about AI threatening jobs as "nonsense".