Oracle layoffs: 6 AM emails, VPN-Slack shutdowns; 10,000 India jobs at risk

Bengaluru: The dreaded 6 am emails from Oracle leadership, along with the sudden revocation of VPN and Slack access, have come to define the ongoing layoffs in India. An estimated 10,000–12,000 employees in India—out of its 50,000-strong workforce—are likely to be affected, according to industry sources, while globally the company is said to be cutting around 30,000 roles.

India, often described internally as a second headquarters for Oracle, is now bearing the brunt of the company’s aggressive AI infrastructure push. Experts said the scale of the layoffs comes as Oracle navigates mounting pressures from its aggressive expansion into AI data centre infrastructure. The developments have raised concerns because they highlight business challenges confronting large enterprises as they ramp up capital-intensive AI investments.

As part of its first quarter 2026 fiscal disclosures, Oracle said it has approved and initiated a restructuring plan aimed at improving operational efficiencies, with estimated costs of up to $1.6 billion. At the same time, the company is raising capital to expand capacity to meet contracted demand from its largest Oracle Cloud Infrastructure customers, including AMD, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, TikTok and xAI. The company expects to raise between $45 billion and $50 billion in gross cash proceeds during the current calendar year.

Significant cuts have been reported across Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), RHS (Revenue and Health Sciences), SVOS (SaaS and Virtual Operations Services), and the India development centre of NetSuite, sources said.

TOI spoke to several impacted employees who described the process as deeply impersonal, with notifications delivered via email and little to no direct communication from managers. The abrupt nature of the exercise, they said, left many feeling unsettled and unsupported during the transition. “I tried to log in to the Oracle OCNA VPN, which is more domain-specific for my area of work. My Slack credentials didn’t work either. We didn’t see this coming so soon,” one employee said.

Amid job cuts across levels, employees point to a stark irony—while some are being laid off, senior managers are still being asked to identify AI-specific talent, even as they are told to make do with existing resources, effectively signalling a hiring freeze.

For employees in the India development centre (IDC) based in Bengaluru, the severance package includes 15 days’ salary (annual gross pay) for each year of service, encashment of accrued annual leave, and an ex gratia component comprising an additional 15 days’ pay per year of service plus two months’ salary. It also includes one month of garden leave (or salary in lieu) and Rs 20,000 towards insurance, sources told TOI. An email sent to Oracle didn't elicit a response till press time.

Oracle Financial Services employee Sushma Rai (name changed) expected April 1 to be a routine workday. Logging in for her 8 am call, she tried to access Slack—only to find her account had been disabled. Repeated calls to her manager initially went unanswered.

“Given my consistent performance and top ratings every year and quarter, I never imagined I would be laid off. The letter came as a shock. When my manager didn’t respond to my calls, it felt strange. He eventually called back to say the letter would reach me within an hour,” Rai told TOI.

Nita Singh (name changed), based at the Hyderabad centre, described a similar experience. Unaware she was on the layoff list, she said her manager offered no explanation for the decision, with communication limited to WhatsApp.

“I wasn’t given any reason by either my manager or the HR SPOC. When I asked about internal redeployment, HR said I had one month—but that’s effectively just the notice period. We don’t even have access to internal portals to explore other roles,” said Singh, who had spent four years at Oracle during her second stint with the company. Employees have been asked to immediately provide a personal email address to receive follow-up communication, including FAQs and separation-related documents.

Oracle India’s revenue grew to Rs 20,459 crore during the 2023-24 financial year from Rs 18,283 crore last year, representing an increase of 12%, according to data sourced from data intelligence platform Tofler.