This is perhaps the fastest and largest layoff done by any company after getting acquired or merged. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) fired more than 90% of its employees in India this weekend as a part of the global layoffs initiated by the company’s new owner Elon Musk. The majority of the layoffs were from the company’s product and engineering staff in a market that is being seen as a market having enormous opportunities by other companies.
Twitter had about 200 headcount in India. After the layoffs little over dozen employees aren’t managing the whole operations in India, according to HT citing sources who are familiar with the situation but remains anonymous die to the sensitivity of the issue.
India is a major growth engine for internet firms like Twitter, Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which are banking on the country’s large potential user base. However, the companies are being subject to increasingly strict regulations on content which is causing growth restrictions for big technology companies operating in India.
Around 70% of Twitter staff that are laid off in India was a part of the engineering and product team who worked under the global mission, one of the employees stated. The positions were also cut across various functions, including public policy, marketing, and communications for corporate clients, people claimed.
However, India is not the only country Musk targeted at. Twitter has cut its manpower to half as a part of its profit-focused strategy. Twitter is now left with approx 3,500 employees worldwide.
Musk is reportedly not happy with the company losing roughly $4 million every day and still relying on advertising. he made it clear that under his leadership company would be going through many changes that will reduce its reliance on advertising dollars. Launching Twitter Blue Subscription at $8 is a part of the strategy to shift many users from all-free access to a monthly recurring model. By bringing the Twitter Verified Accounts under Twitter Blue subscription, Musk has made many people unhappy, while there are many who are raising concerns about twitter’s future existence.
India is also the second largest country for Twitter in terms of users. However, it has also most tense political discussions on Twitter With rival parties frequently reciting accusations back and forth, and accusing one another of spreading lies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has more than 84 million followers on Twitter. It’s not clear how Twitter will manage the moderation process to filter out abusive and false information. Considering the company is left with just a dozen of employees in India, all of them will be on their toes to manage moderation in India which has greater than 100 official languages.
Musk has been pushing the employees who are still there to speed up the release of new features. The pressure could be understood from the fact that, in some cases, employees have been sleeping in the office itself to meet deadlines.
Amid all the criticism, uncertainty and questions that are looming large,m one thing is certain – Musk has reset the button as he is committed to redefining Twitter!
