Google-owned Waze lays off 5% of workforce, shuts offices

San Francisco, Sep 11 Google-owned navigation and mapping company Waze will lay off 5 per cent of its global workforce, about 30 people out of 555, the company's CEO has announced as the ingoing pandemic has hit its operations.

Waze will shut several of its offices in the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions as it seeks to refocus its business on certain markets, reports The Verge.

"We've decided to focus our resources on product improvements for our users, accelerate our investments in technical infrastructure, and refocus our sales and marketing efforts on a small number of high-value countries," said Waze CEO Noam Bardin in an email addressed to the employees.

Waze was acquired by Google for about $1.1 billion in 2013.

Of the 30 people receiving pink slips, most are from the company's sales, marketing, and partnerships divisions.

"We will be closing the on-the-ground Sales offices in APAC (Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia) and smaller LATAM markets (Colombia, Argentina, Chile)," Bardin said.

"The leaving Wazers were a critical part of our growth up to now and it is important that we take care of those leaving as best we can. Our goal is to try and help as much as possible and ease this process for them. We've done our best to support those affected with a severance package," the CEO wrote.

( With inputs from IANS )