'He did 3 people's work'—Ola engineer's suicide sparks outrage
19 May 2025

The alleged suicide of a young employee from Ola's artificial intelligence division, Krutrim, has raised major concerns about the company's workplace culture.

Nikhil Somwanshi, a recent graduate from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, joined Krutrim less than a year ago.

His tragic death on May 8 came to light when an anonymous Reddit user called the company's work environment "traumatic," especially for newcomers.

Allegations of abusive work environment
Work culture

The Reddit post, purportedly from Somwanshi's colleague, said: "He used to work in Krutrim, and with two other guys leading a project(even after being a freshie). The other two guys left the company, so he was cramped up with work of the other two as well."

The post further alleged that the team's manager "just attends the calls, bashes people left, right and center and disappears since he lives in US and most workforce is here in Bangalore."

Former employees corroborate allegations
Support

Former employees of Krutrim have corroborated the allegations made in the Reddit post.

One ex-employee, who had worked closely with the team manager, resigned due to intense work pressure and admitted to feeling suicidal.

Another former employee described their experience under the same manager as a "nightmare," claiming that team members were routinely subjected to verbal abuse even for basic clarifications or suggesting improvements.

Ola Krutrim responds to the allegations
Company response

Responding to the allegations, an Ola Krutrim spokesperson expressed condolences.

"We are deeply saddened by the tragic passing of one of our most talented young employees, Nikhil," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson further clarified that Somwanshi was on personal leave when he died and had initially reached out to his manager on April 8 for rest.

He informed the team he was feeling better but would benefit from additional rest on April 17. His leave was extended accordingly.

Somwanshi's contributions to AI project
Project details

Somwanshi developed a large language model (LLM) and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)-based chatbot named Saathi as part of his master's thesis funded by the Melinda Gates Foundation.

The project was a joint effort of IISc Bangalore, Oxford Brookes University (UK), Kotak Mahindra Bank, and Akaike Technologies.

Saathi sought to simplify access to over 200 government schemes across four Indian states by supporting regional dialects.