BENGALURU: The era of growth at all costs for private technology companies is coming to an end. India’s most-valued startups, including hospitality player Oyo , ride-hailing giant Ola and online classifieds major Quikr , have started cutting jobs over the last few weeks as they look to reduce costs, anticipating a tougher financing environment in 2020.Quikr has laid off close to 1,000 employees, which is about a third of its total 3,000 workforce over the last few weeks, said a source, even as it shut down its beauty services business AtHomeDiva.Oyo is expected to shed 250-500 jobs as part of its restructuring of India business where, it said, it had over 9,000 employees in August. However, people briefed on the matter said the total number could be higher, with reports pegging it at 2,000. TOI had reported in its November 29 edition that Ola is expected to cut 15-20% of its 5,800-6,000 workforce in phases over the coming months. Paytm has fired about 500 employees, according to a report on online news portal Entrackr. One source said the layoffs at Paytm were of contract workers who were not on its books, though TOI could not independently verify this.“Due to our cross-category model, we get a good view of comparative economics of various categories we operate in. Based on this view, we recently decided to tweak the operating model in some of our categories, including a change in related market offerings. These changes have also resulted in some workforce rationalisation at our end,” said a Quikr spokesperson. The company, which was last valued at $1.6 billion, is also investigating fraud in its accommodation business for which it is pursuing legal action.Oyo’s layoffs come as a part of the company’s reorganisation plans to cut costs after a major global expansion over the last two years. An Oyo spokesperson said, “We may replace some individuals after giving them the opportunity to go through a performance improvement programme.” An Ola spokesperson said that the company has 4,500 employees on rolls and layoffs have impacted 5-8% of the workforce. The development is significant as three of these companies — Oyo, Ola and Paytm — which are also backed by Japanese telecom and investment major SoftBank — have raised a significant amount of fresh capital this year. While Oyo, which has been on a global expansion spree, had announced a $1.5-billion capital raise in October, Noida-based Paytm said it mopped up $1 billion last month. Ola has also raised over $400-500 million this year in multiple tranches from investors, including South Korea’s Hyundai and Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal.The development comes even as several well-funded startups have stopped hiring over the last few months as the overall funding environment turns cautious. Investors said that belt-tightening across large startups is a fallout of the global scrutiny of high cash burn businesses post-WeWork’s failed IPO, which saw the US-based office sharing startup’s valuation fall from $47 billion to $8 billion.“In the post-WeWork era, one thing is very clear for late-stage companies is that their fundraising and valuation are facing much deeper scrutiny than six months ago. And to justify valuations, questions around the viability of the business and path to profitability are being asked as well. Then companies need to cut excess burn and expenses,” said Rutvik Doshi, MD at early-stage investment firm Inventus Capital India.