India's big tech double whammy: Layoffs at Google, Twitter shuts two offices

The shaky tech jobs market continues to impact employees at big tech companies in the country. On Friday, Twitter India laid off ad sales employees in a fresh round of job cuts, said a report by The Information.

The social media company had about 800 sales and marketing employees as of last month, as per the report. However, the total number of job cuts were not known immediately.

Similarly, Alphabet-run Google's India arm laid off 453 employees across various departments on Thursday. An email was sent to employees from Sanjay Gupta, Vice president and Country Head, Google India, informing them of the move, according to a report by The Hindu Business Line.

Meanwhile, Twitter has closed two of its offices in India–in Mumbai and New Delhi, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the development. The company has asked employees to work from home for now. Only the Bengaluru office, which mostly consists of engineers, is functioning, as Elon Musk attempts to turn the struggling social media platform's fortune and make its financials profitable.

In 2022, after Tesla Founder Musk took over Twitter, the micro-blogging site fired roughly over 200 employees or more than 90% of its employees in the country.

These developments come at a time when big tech firms—including Meta and Amazon—have been laying off employees as part of cost-cutting efforts amid a weakening global economy.

Last month, Google had said it would be laying off 6% or 12,000 employees globally. At the time, chief executive Sundar Pichai said he took "full responsibility for the decisions that led us here," as per reports.

A query sent to Google did not elicit any response until the publishing of this story. Twitter could not be immediately reached for comment.

Disclaimer: This story has been updated to reflect recent updates on Twitter layoffs.