Elon Musk is on a drive to cut expenses and turn Twitter around. His latest move as the CEO of the social networking site involves closing two of the company's three locations in India and telling employees to work from home.
Offices in New Delhi (India's political capital) and Mumbai (India's financial capital) were reportedly shuttered by Twitter after the company laid off its employees in India late last year.
Apparently, Musk has already slashed costs by laying off 90% of Twitter's workforce in India back in November 2022, leaving just roughly 12 people in their region.
About 140 employees, or 70%, were part of the product and engineering teams that were let go. Staff who worked in public relations, advertising, and policy development were also terminated.
According to Bloomberg's anonymous sources, the company's office in the southern tech capital of Bengaluru is still active, with most employees being engineers.
Indian Market
In a move to keep Twitter financially viable by late 2023, billionaire CEO Musk has dismissed employees and closed operations throughout the globe. Yet, American IT heavyweights like Meta and Alphabet's Google see India as a crucial growth area and are placing long-term investments in India's world's fastest-growing internet industry.
Musk's recent behavior indicates he is now giving the market less of his attention.
During the last several years, Twitter has become one of India's most prominent public spaces, attracting both passionate political debate and 86.5 million Prime Minister Narendra Modi's followers, as Bloomberg reported. Despite this, Musk's firm does not make a lot of money in that region due to challenges like content restrictions and intense local rivalry.
Financial Stability
Questions have been raised concerning Twitter's ability to continue operations and enforce content guidelines in light of the mass departure of employees, many of whom were dismissed, following Musk's takeover in October 2022.
Last week, Musk said that he might need till the end of the year to restore the company's financial health and stability.
In a prior report by Insider Business, at least a dozen overseas Twitter offices have shuttered or are at risk of closing. This includes locations in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Mexico, Africa, Australia, and South Korea. It is also said that most of its European operations will also be closing.
Since the $44 billion acquisition, Twitter has failed to pay millions of dollars in rent for its San Francisco and London headquarters. It has also been sued by several contractors for unpaid services and auctioned off everything from bird sculptures to espresso machines to generate money.
Moreover, Musk has publicly discussed the possibility of bankruptcy, citing a huge loss in income due to sponsors fleeing over worries about Twitter's capacity to censor offensive material. There have been major issues and scandals on the site, the most recent of which occurred this month.
