Elon Musk shuts down two of Twitter’s three offices in India as staffing is slashed

This comes after mass layoffs at Twitter in 2022, during which 90 per cent of the company’s roughly 200-plus staff in India was let go

File image: Twitter slashes down its operations in India where it has 24.45 million active users (Getty)

Twitter decided to close down two of its three offices in its key market, India, with just three employees left to manage the work in one of the world’s most populous countries.

The social media giant shut down offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The company will continue to operate its office in the southern tech hub of Bengaluru which mainly houses engineers, the report added.

This comes after the mass layoffs at Twitter in 2022, during which 90 per cent of the company’s roughly 200-plus staff in India were let go as the new boss Elon Musk looked to cut costs.

Twitter also announced a dozen more job cuts in its Dublin and Singapore offices as part of its cost-cutting measures, resulting in layoffs of around 3,700 employees in November 2022.

The company is now only left with three employees in India, according to a report by CNBC TV18 citing people with knowledge of the matter, including the country’s lead and two others covering the north and east, and south and west regions.

The report added that the remaining staff is continuing to work from home with mostly staff engineers left at Twitter’s Bengaluru office, which is a shared space, who mostly report directly to the US office and are not part of the India team.

This comes as another worrying development at Twitter Inc as it slashes down its operations in the country where it has 24.45 million active users, the third highest after the US and Japan.

Lack of content moderation in countries outside the US was already considered one of the major challenges as social media giants like Twitter and Facebook play an increased role in public and political discourse in the world.

Activists and experts have often voiced concerns regarding misinformation and rising harassment on Twitter as content written in languages other than English often faces less scrutiny.

But since Mr Musk’s takeover, Twitter has taken up extensive cost-cut measures instead of expanding on security and safety features, firing staff and even auctioning off assets to raise funds.

According to the billionaire, the company needs to undergo various changes in order to become profitable. Twitter has faced various challenges off late, such as failing to pay rent for its San Francisco and London offices, and being sued by multiple contractors over unpaid services.

The company has also suffered a massive drop in revenue, with a reported 35 per cent fall in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2022, amounting to $1.025bn.

Despite these challenges, Twitter launched its subscription service, Twitter Blue, in India, starting at Rs 650 per month (£6.55).