Singapore ride-hailing firm Grab Holdings said it is slashing more than 1,000 jobs or 11% of its workforce to cut costs and keep the company competitive, in its biggest round of job cuts since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Anthony Tan, Group CEO and Co-Founder wrote a letter to employees on Tuesday. “I have difficult news to share today. We are letting over 1,000 Grabbers go. We are informing you after office hours for as many of our locations as possible, so you have the space and time to process the news privately. I know that a decision like this is a difficult one, and I want to be accountable and explain why and how we got here.”

Tan continued, “I want to be clear that we are not doing this as a shortcut to profitability. Over the past couple of years we’ve been consistent in managing costs tightly in all areas of our operations and on improving platform efficiency. As a result, our bottom line has improved every quarter since Q1 2022. With or without this exercise, we’re on track to hit group djusted EBITDA breakeven this year.”

The Singapore-based company started out as a taxi-hailing service in Malaysia in 2012, before later expanding to ride-hailing, food delivery and financial services across eight countries in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

In 2018, Grab acquired rival Uber’s Southeast Asian operations after years of price wars to carve out market share.

Grab has been slower than other technology firms in the region in slashing jobs. The company initially said last September that it had no plans for massive job cuts.

“We must adapt to the environment in which we operate,” Tan said. “Change has never been this fast. Technology such as Generative AI is evolving at breakneck speed. The cost of capital has gone up, directly impacting the competitive landscape.”

“The primary goal of this exercise is to strategically reorganise ourselves, so that we can move faster, work smarter, and rebalance our resources across our portfolio in line with our longer term strategies,” Tan said. “Restructuring thus emerged as a painful but necessary step, to set Grab on the correct trajectory towards our longer-term future.”

Grab reported a 130% rise in revenue to $525 million for its quarter ended March 2023, however it also clocked a loss of $250 million from the same time last year. In February, Grab brought forward its profitability goal, expecting to break even in the final quarter of 2023. It previously expected to turn profitable in the second half of 2024.