Twitter dismisses over 90% of its employees in India, leaving only twelve

Over the weekend, Twitter Inc. let off more than 90% of its employees in India as part of a global restructuring led by new owner Elon Musk. This drastically reduced the company’s engineering and product team in a country with the potential to develop.

According to persons acquainted with the situation who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation, the firm employed just over 200 workers in India before the cutbacks, and it now only has around a dozen employees.

For international internet businesses like Twitter, Meta Platforms Inc., and Google, which are depending on its sizable potential pool of new online users, India is a major growth engine. However, businesses must also adhere to increasingly tough content laws that are intended to control the nation’s major digital corporations.

One of the persons stated that the product and engineering team, which operated on a worldwide mandate, accounted for almost 70% of the positions slashed in India. According to the persons, positions were also eliminated in departments such as corporate communications, public policy, and marketing. The San Francisco, California-based Twitter cut nearly 3,700 jobs from its workforce globally.

An email requesting comment was not immediately answered by Twitter.

With rival political parties often tossing accusations back and forth and accusing one another of disseminating false information, India has one of the tensest political dialogues on Twitter. More than 84 million people follow Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the platform. With its recently downsized employees in the nation, which has more than 100 different official languages, it is unclear how Twitter hopes to control that dialogue.

Twitter’s offices in India are in New Delhi, Bengaluru in the south, and Mumbai’s financial district.