Employees lose access before termination emails arrive
Nearly 550 Innodata employees in India reportedly lost their jobs on October 26, 2026, with workers describing a day that began with routine attendance checks and ended with company accounts disabled and termination notices arriving in personal inboxes. Job losses were also reported in the Philippines, including among employees associated with the MUPSL project.
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A termination email sent to an employee of Innodata India Pvt. Ltd. gave October 26 as the last working day and attributed the decision to a reduction in the business assignment for which the employee had been hired. The communication said the decision concerned business requirements rather than individual performance.
For employees, the disruption extended beyond losing their jobs. Access to the company's human resources and payroll systems was also withdrawn, leaving some unable to download payslips and other employment records before starting the exit process.
Innodata had not publicly confirmed the number affected in India, the Philippines or elsewhere. The identities of the client and assignment involved, the full list of affected teams and any timetable for further announcements were also unavailable.
How a normal Monday changed
A 28-year-old engineer based in Delhi described employees logging in and recording attendance as usual on Monday morning. Work continued until around lunchtime, when news began circulating that colleagues in the Philippines had been dismissed during a Zoom call.
The reported Philippines dismissals involved raters, quality experts, team leads and operational managers. Workers in India then checked their own employment systems and contacted managers and human resources staff for answers.
The Delhi engineer described managers as surprised by the developments:
We frantically reached out to our managers, who were also taken aback at the news,
Access to work devices and official accounts then began disappearing. Later in the day, termination messages reached personal email accounts, according to the employee. The practical result was that some workers learned their employment was ending only after their usual channels for communicating with the company had stopped working.
The sequence from attendance to dismissal
October 26 was both the working day employees said they had started normally and the effective termination date stated in the employment notice. The employee account describes several stages:
- Morning: employees in India logged in, recorded attendance and began their normal assignments.
- Around lunchtime: reports circulated about dismissals among Philippines teams during a Zoom call.
- During the day: some Indian employees checked the human resources portal, where payslips had been generated and October 26 appeared as the resignation date and last working day.
- Later: workers lost access to company devices, official accounts and the payroll application.
- By late evening: a WhatsApp group created to contact colleagues had grown to almost 500 people, according to the Delhi employee.
- Later that day: termination emails arrived in personal inboxes, giving October 26, 2026, as the final day of employment.
The portal's use of a resignation date sits alongside an email describing a company decision to discontinue employment. For affected workers, obtaining a clear written employment record is therefore part of the immediate exit process, alongside collecting pay documents and returning equipment.
What the termination notice says
Innodata's termination email attributed the dismissal to a smaller business assignment. In everyday terms, the company said the work for which the employee had been engaged was being reduced.
The company set out its reason in the notice:
This decision has been taken in view of the prevailing business and operational requirements and is not related to your individual performance.
The wording places the stated reason on the amount or requirements of the work, rather than the employee's conduct or results. That matters to workers seeking to explain the end of their employment when applying for another job.
The notice also described a full and final settlement, meaning the payment intended to close out the employee's financial account with the company. It said a demand draft had been prepared and a copy attached for reference. A demand draft is a payment instrument issued by a bank.
The original draft would be handed over after the employee returned all company assets, under the company's procedures. Employees therefore faced an exit process involving both the return of equipment and the collection of their settlement.
Why access to payroll records matters
The Delhi engineer said workers had no opportunity to retrieve important documents before access to the human resources application was revoked. The employee described receiving no telephone call from human resources while trying to understand what had happened.
Payslips record earnings and deductions. Employees may need them to check their final payment, keep tax records or provide evidence of previous income when seeking another job. Losing access during a dismissal adds an administrative problem at the moment a worker is also facing an interruption to earnings.
Colleagues turned to WhatsApp to reconnect outside company systems. According to the engineer, the group reached almost 500 members by late evening, with people trying to identify who else had been affected and obtain information.
The nearly 550 figure refers to the reported job losses in India; the almost 500 figure describes membership of the employee's WhatsApp group. The figures measure different things. A confirmed headcount would require employment information from the company rather than a count of people joining a messaging group.
For workers, the immediate tasks were concrete: secure copies of employment and pay records, obtain the termination communication, understand the settlement and complete the return of company property.
Philippines accounts point to several job categories
Accounts of the Philippines cuts described employees at several levels of operations, from people rating work to quality specialists and managers. Raters assess material against instructions, while quality staff check whether work meets the required standard.
Posts on Reddit from people identifying themselves as Innodata employees also described dismissals on October 26. An account identifying as an AI analyst associated layoffs in the Philippines, India and the United States with the MUPSL project.
Another account, identifying as a process analyst, said their position had been declared redundant because the volume of services required by a major client had fallen. Redundancy means an employer says a position is no longer needed.
Those employee accounts offer a possible explanation for particular dismissals, while the termination email gives the company's stated reason for the Indian employee's exit: a reduction in the relevant assignment. The broader international accounts remain unverified.
Employees whose work is organised around a particular assignment can face an immediate change when that assignment shrinks. Here, identifying the affected project and the volume of work withdrawn would help explain how the reported reductions reached several job categories and locations.
The scale within Innodata's AI business
Innodata, founded in 1988 and headquartered in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, provides data engineering and artificial intelligence services. Its work includes labelling data, helping train AI models, evaluating their responses and testing safety.
Data labelling means adding descriptions or categories to information so an AI system can learn from it. Evaluation involves checking the system's output against a set of requirements. These activities depend on people carrying out and reviewing defined tasks, including the kinds of rating and quality roles mentioned in the employee accounts.
Innodata's 2025 annual report put its global workforce at 10,107 employees as of December 31, 2025. Nearly 550 jobs would equal roughly 5.4% of that earlier worldwide headcount. The comparison gives a sense of scale, using a global workforce figure recorded almost 10 months before the reported India cuts.
The company's website lists customers including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Snowflake, Boeing and Deloitte. The client mentioned in the employee's account of reduced service volumes was unnamed.
The most immediate consequence is concentrated among workers who described losing their jobs and their access to employment systems on the same day. Their next steps depend on clear termination records, access to documents and completion of the settlement process described in the company notice.
Key Points
- Nearly 550 Innodata employees in India reportedly lost their jobs on October 26, 2026.
- Workers described losing access to devices, company accounts and payroll systems before termination emails arrived.
- A company termination notice cited a reduction in the employee's business assignment and said individual performance was not the reason.
- Job cuts were also reported in the Philippines, including among raters, quality staff and managers.
- The settlement notice said the original demand draft would be handed over after company assets were returned.
- Innodata had not publicly confirmed the total number of affected employees across locations.
