Elon Musk closes two Twitter offices in India

Twitter Inc has closed two of its three offices in India, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The social media company shut down offices in New Delhi and Mumbai but continues to operate its office in the southern tech hub of Bengaluru which mostly houses engineers, the report added.

Twitter, under new owner Elon Musk, fired more than 90% of just over 200 of its staff in India last year, Bloomberg had reported.

The development had come as part of Musk’s strategy to reduce Twitter’s costs globally but depleted its product and engineering staff in a market with immense potential for growth.

In India, the company has just over 200 employees, while the massive cut has left just over a dozen of its staff at present, those aware of the matter have shared with Bloomberg while seeking anonymity.

India is known as one of the most potential-driven markets in the world for growth in the tech sector with several Big Tech firms including Twitter, Google, and Meta Platforms, relying on its immense potential to find new users online.

However, these companies also encounter strict regulations in the country when it comes to the content on their platforms.

The product and engineering teams have been targeted in the recent job cuts for Twitter in India. One of the people, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the teams were working for the micro-blogging site on a global mandate.

Demotions were also done across its departments including corporate communications, marketing, and public policy, Bloomberg reported. In San Francisco, the company has scaled down its manpower by roughly half of the total headcount.

In India, the California-based Twitter offices are situated in New Delhi, Mumbai, and tech hub Bengaluru.

Last month, the company ordered at least a dozen more job cuts in Dublin and Singapore offices as part of wider cost-cutting measures at Twitter that saw layoffs of about 3,700 employees in early November.

Twitter did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.