Bringing the mass layoffs drive to India, Twitter has fired the majority of its over 200 employees in the country. The layoffs arrived after a order by the microblogging sites new owner Elon Musk who is looking to make his USD 44 billion acquisition work.
As per the reports the layoffs are taken across the field of engineering, sales and marketing, and communications teams. However, there is no clarity yet on the severance package to be reimbursed to employees laid off in India. The whole marketing and communications department in India has been sacked, the reports claimed.
Blaming activists for the critical drop in the company’s revenues Musk tweeted “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”
Commenting upon the sacks after 24 hours of the company’s initial email notifying employees of forthcoming layoffs, Musk tweeted, “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day.”
The drive is part of Musk’s thrust to find ways to expend for the mammoth $44 billion deal for which he took on billions of dollars in debt and traded $15.5 billion worth of shares in Tesla, his electric car company.
Reportedly, the Tesla and SpaceX chief, owes $1 billion in annual interest alone to pay for a deal he attempted to wiggle out from almost as soon as he put together it in April.
Musk has been rushing to find new ways for Twitter to make money after his mammoth buyout, comprising an idea to charge users $8 a month for verified accounts.
Reports aim that company sources said that Musk’s teams were inflicting a furious pace on the surviving employees, bringing in Tesla developers to supervise the work of “Tweeps,” the inhouse name for Twitter workers.