Layoffs begin at Twitter India after Elon Musk's takeover; 'significant chunk' of team affected

Twitter has started laying off employees in India as part of a global job cut ordered by the social media platform's new owner Elon Musk to attain economies of scale and make the USD 44 billion acquisition viable.

World's richest businessman Musk began his innings at Twitter last week by firing the CEO Parag Agrawal as well as the CFO and some other top executives. This was followed by an exodus of top management. Musk has now started a massive exercise to downsize the company's global workforce.

"Lay-off has started. Some of my colleagues have received email notification regarding this," a Twitter India employee told PTI on condition of anonymity. Another source said the lay-offs have affected a "significant chunk" of the India team.

The full details of the job cuts were not immediately available.

Twitter India did not respond to email queries.

The US-based social media platform, in an internal email to employees earlier, had said, "In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday." It said that "everyone will receive an individual email".

The company will temporarily close all offices for safety of employees as well as Twitter systems and customer data. "If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home," Twitter had said.

While Twitter had several run-ins with the government over freedom of speech, the company in the email barred employees from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere.