Twitter Lays Off More Than 50% Workforce In India

Twitter has culled a ‘significant chunk’ of its workforce in India as part of the larger global restructuring ordered by its new boss Elon Musk.

According to Inc42 sources, Musk has laid off nearly half of the 300-member team across marketing communications, engineering, sales, and product development verticals. 

As per a Mint report, Twitter’s marketing, communications and partnerships departments have been scrapped. However, Twitter India has retained a few salespersons post the layoffs. Some reports also claimed that job cuts have affected other key verticals, including the engineering department, as well.

“We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward,” Twitter stated in a company-wide email.

Many of the fired employees took to Twitter to share their parting messages and to lash out at the layoffs. 

“Just got laid off from #Twitter. Bird App, it was an absolute honour, the greatest privilege ever to be a part of this team, this culture…,” tweeted Yash Agarwal who worked as former public policy at Twitter India. 

Taking a dig at new owner Elon Musk, Twitter India’s head of communications, Pallavi Wali said, “#AlwaysATweepNeverATwit. That’s it. That’s the Tweet!”

Twitter executives have been sending separate mails to employees that have been allowed to keep their jobs, for those that have been fired and for those that continue to be in limbo. 

In an internal email sent earlier today, Twitter informed its employees that the surviving employees will receive an email on their official work email IDs, while those who have been fired will receive a communication on their personal email ID. 

“We know you likely have a number of questions and we will have more information to share next week. In the meantime, please note that until Monday, Birdhouse is temporarily offline, our office buildings are temporarily closed and all badge access is temporarily suspended. Offices will reopen on Monday,” read an email received by one of the employees.

Mayhem At Twitter

The drama unravelled at the India office barely a week after Elon Musk took over the reins of the social media platform. As his first order of business after acquiring the company for $44 Bn, Musk fired Twitter’s chief executive (CEO) Parag Agrawal and policy chief Vijaya Gadde. 

Post that, reports continue to circulate that the new management was looking at mass layoffs as part of a restructuring exercise to turn around the financial health of the social media platform. Besides layoffs, Musk has unveiled plans to generate new streams of income by monetising the blue tick that verifies Twitter users. The platform aims to charge users $8 for the badge to create an additional revenue stream for the company. 

This adds to the growing list of problems plaguing the Indian arm of the social media firm. Twitter India has dragged the Indian government to Court over a slew of ‘innocuous’ block orders. Additionally, the social media platform has also come under fire from the government for non-compliance with Indian laws and for failing to curb fake news.

Despite all the headwinds, India continues to be a key market for the social media platform. The country is home to the firm’s third largest market in the world in terms of number of users, accounting for 23.6 Mn users. 

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Update | 5th Nov, 9:00 AM IST

The story has been updated to include information gathered from Inc42 sources.