Back when Twitter’s stock price was trading around $37, the company acquired Bangalore, India-based ZipDial to bring “Twitter to more people around the world.”
One year and eight months later — with Twitter’s stock price cut roughly in half — the social network is reportedly laying off half of its staff in Bangalore, including all of its engineers there. While Twitter declined to disclose the number of people affected, a person familiar with the matter tells VentureBeat that the layoffs in the city affected fewer than 20 people.
Twitter will maintain offices in Bangalore, as well as Delhi and Mumbai.
In January 2015, Twitter called out ZipDial’s potential to bring tweets to “areas where people aren’t always connected” to Wi-Fi or cellular networks. Twitter formed a new engineering office in Bangalore at the time, as part of a “significantly” increased investment in India.
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Yesterday, Twitter reportedly said the layoffs are “part of our normal business review.”
Twitter’s actions have prompted at least one Bangalore-based company, Stayzilla, to tweet job offers to the affected engineers.
Updated 7:51 a.m. PT with details on the number of people affected.
