Twitter has closed down its offices in Mumbai and New Delhi and told the staff to work from home, following only three employees are left in the social media giant’s India team, sources told CNBC-TV18 on February 17.

Share Market Live

NSE

The three people in Twitter’s India team include the country lead and two others covering the north and east, and south and west regions, the people cited above said, adding that all of them continue to work from home.

Twitter's Bengaluru office, meanwhile, is a shared space that staffs engineers who mostly report directly to the US office and are not part of the India team.

The move to shut down two of the three physical offices in India is a continuation or extended version of the mass layoffs that happened at Twitter India in late 2022 as part of which 90 percent of the company's roughly 200-plus staff in India was let go as the new boss Elon Musk looked to cut costs.

Billionaire Musk took over Twitter in October in a $44 billion deal and rolled out multiple product and organisational changes including Twitter-verified Blue check-mark as a paid service. Within weeks of joining, he also sacked half of the staff of the 7,500-strong workforce.

Also Read: Twitter Blue subscription launched in India, starts at Rs 650 per month

Globally, since the $44 billion buyout, Twitter has failed to pay millions of dollars in rent for its San Francisco headquarters and London offices, been sued by multiple contractors over unpaid services, and auctioned off everything from bird statues to espresso machines to raise money.

In November 2022, Musk said that Twitter was facing "a massive drop in revenue" as advertisers dropped out. The social media platform’s revenue for the fourth quarter fell about 35 percent to $1.025 billion, a top ad executive revealed at a staff meeting, according to the Information.

Also Read: Elon Musk says Twitter will share ad revenue with creators — but there’s a catch

Separately, reports suggest Musk has said he might step down as the Twitter CEO by the end of this year, after stabilising the company and making it more financially viable.

Also Read: Twitter workers forced to drop class-action suit over severance

Also Read: From mass layoffs to resignations: How Elon Musk's Twitter went from 7,500 to 2,900 employees in three weeks

First Published:Feb 17, 2023 10:26 AM IST