India tech woes persist: Twitter closes two offices, Google fires 450 staff

In the latest round of tech layoffs in the country, Google India is reported to have fired about 450 employees across functions on Thursday night (February 16), and Twitter shut down two of its three India offices, asking its employees to work from home.

According to unidentified sources, Sanjay Gupta, Country Head, Google India sent an email to the fired employees.

Twitter, which had sacked almost 190 of its staff in India last year after Elon Musk acquired the company, closed its Delhi and Mumbai offices, but continued to operate its Bengaluru office, said a report from Bloomberg.

These latest developments come after thousands of jobs were cut globally by the big technology companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook’s parent company Meta, Google’s parent company Alphabet, among others.

Also read: How Elon Musk’s ruthless layoffs, summary firings paint him as an employer

Alphabet Inc. sacked 6 per cent of its global headcount amounting to 12,000 employees, while Twitter fired 50 per cent of its 7,500 workforce after Elon Musk took over the reins of the company in late October 2022.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, had mailed the employees stating that he took “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.”

Elon Musk has focused on cutting costs as he struggles to stem the losses in the social media service company he has taken over amidst a huge drop in revenue as advertisers have left the company in droves.

Twitter seems to be in a financial crisis as it has not paid rent for its offices in San Francisco and London and faces lawsuits from contractors who have not been paid. The billionaire owner has even publicly flirted with the idea of declaring the company bankrupt.