Twitter reportedly fired 90% of its employees in India

Twitter fired more than 90% of its staff in India over the weekend in a directive from the new billionaire owner, Elon Musk, with 70% of laid-off employees from the product and engineering team which worked on a global mandate, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The layoffs of Twitter employees in India come as part of global headcount reductions by new owner Elon Musk. The Social media giant had laid off 3700 employees, a total of 50% of its workforce globally late last week. The employees were notified of the job cuts in a company-wide email, in a report by The Economic Times.

Musk confirmed the layoffs in a tweet:

"Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required."

Other positions that were also slashed across functions include marketing, public policy and corporate communications, bringing the strength of the Indian workforce from as high as 200 employees to only a dozen, the report said.

With India being one of the biggest markets for the media giant and with one of the most sizzling political conversations on the platform, it remains to be seen how Twitter expects to moderate that discourse with its newly reduced staff in the country, which has more than 100 languages.