Twitter fires more than 90% of its Indian employees, leaving about a dozen

Twitter Inc. let off more than 90% of its employees in India over the weekend as part of Elon Musk’s global layoffs, significantly depleting its engineering and product personnel in a prospective growth region.

The company employed slightly over 200 workers in India, and the cuts reduced it to about a dozen employees, according to persons familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the situation.

India is an important growth engine for global internet companies like Twitter, Meta Platforms Inc., and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which rely on its vast potential pool of new online users. However, the companies are also subject to more stringent content laws aimed at limiting the country’s large digital firms.

According to one source, over 70% of the employees lost in India were from the product and engineering team, which worked on a worldwide mandate. Positions were also reduced in functions such as marketing, public policy, and corporate communications, according to the sources. Globally, the San Francisco, California-based company Twitter cut its workforce by approximately half, or 3,700 employees.

Twitter did not respond immediately to an email requesting comment

On Twitter, India has one of the most heated political debates, with rival parties frequently hurling accusations at each other and accusing each other of spreading misinformation. On the service, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has over 84 million followers. It’s unclear how Twitter plans to manage that debate with its newly decreased employees in the country, which speaks more than 100 languages.

Twitter’s India offices are in New Delhi, Mumbai’s financial capital, and Bengaluru, India’s southern IT hub.

According to Bloomberg News, the company still employs approximately 3,700 people worldwide. Musk is pressuring those who remain to produce new features swiftly, and in some cases, employees have even slept at the office to fulfil new targets.

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