TikTok lays off entire India team, to give 9-month severance pay: Report

Mangalore Today News Network / News18

New Delhi, Feb 10, 2023: Short video app TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, fired its entire India workforce earlier this week, according to an ET report quoting sources aware of the development. It said about 40 people were laid off after a call and would be given up to 9 months of severance pay.

 

“The TikTok India employees were told that February 28 would be their last day and were given feelers to look out for other opportunities for some time as it was conveyed that restarting India operations was not going to take off because of the government’s stance on Chinese apps," according to the ET report quoting source.

After the government banned TikTok in June 2020, several workers were mostly working on the Dubai and Brazil markets. The app had around 200 million users in India.

It also quoted another source saying “the entire team was informed. We were anyway told some time ago that business in India may be shut off, so look for jobs. Most people will be given 90 days severance".

According to the latest data from layoffs.fyi, about 332 tech companies have laid off 1,00,746 employees in 2023 so far. The year 2023 has witnessed mass layoffs by companies such as Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and Amazon, among others. Google laid off 6 per cent of its workforce or 12,000 employees, the highest among all companies. Microsoft let go of 10,000 employees, Amazon sacked around 8,000 employees.

Apart from these, Salesforce laid off 8,000 employees, Dell sacked 6,650, IBM about 3,900, SAP nearly 3,000, Zoom around 1,300, and Coinbase about 950 employees, among others.

In the latest tech layoffs, Yahoo has announced to lay off 20 percent of its staff, impacting 1,600 employees in its ad tech business. Employees were notified on Thursday that 12 per cent of the company (1,000 employees) would be laid off before the end of the day. Within the next six months, another 8 percent — or 600 — will lose their jobs. Around half of Yahoo’s ad tech business will be affected by these cuts.

Microsoft-owned GitHub has also announced to lay off about 10 per cent of its workforce or 300 employees in the upcoming quarter. The company will vacate its offices and become fully remote once their leases ends.