After India completely banned TikTok, nearly 90% of employees were laid off

Author | Dai Runze

Recently, the Indian government announced a permanent ban on 59 Chinese apps including TikTok.

Affected by this, TikTok, which is very popular in India, announced the end of its Indian business and will lay off a large number of employees, retaining only the core team.

In response, ByteDance said the company had no other choice.

Since the Indian government began banning TikTok in late June last year, the company has not found any clear direction to restore the app.

Therefore, the issue of whether TikTok employees in India stay or leave has become a matter of great concern to everyone.

According to Caixin.com, TikTok's Indian team held an employee meeting on January 27 to announce the decision to lay off employees, and the corresponding domestic operations team is also considering downsizing.

More than half of the operational employees in India will be laid off, which is about 30 people.

According to reports, TikTok India has hundreds of employees in product, R&D, operations, marketing, and audit positions, and most of the audit staff are from outsourcing companies. TikTok has not disclosed the scale of layoffs in other positions.

In Shanghai, ByteDance has a team responsible for TikTok's operations in South Asia, including India and Pakistan.

Relevant insiders said that ByteDance will lay off more than 1,800 employees in the next two weeks.

The number of layoffs this time is close to 90% of TikTok's total employees in India. What is more worrying is that these employees will be asked to leave between this Wednesday and the first week of February this year.

According to the original plan, TikTok will only retain a core team of less than 250 people in India and make room for WeWork's office in Gurgaon.

In response, a TikTok spokesperson said helplessly: "It is deeply regrettable that after supporting more than 2,000 employees in India for half a year since the ban began, we still have no choice but to reduce the number of employees. But we still look forward to the opportunity to re-launch TikTok in India in the future and continue to strongly support hundreds of millions of users, artists, educators and creators."

TikTok CEO Vanessa Pappas and Vice President of Global Business Blake Chandlee wrote in a memo to Indian employees:

"When the ban started, we initially hoped that this would only be temporary and that we would find a quick solution to the problem. However, seven months later, we found that this was not the case. As part of the team, you have been patiently waiting for the situation to develop for a long time, and you have been under tremendous psychological pressure during this period. Thank you very much for your trust and support in us."

Pappas and Chandley also wrote in the memo: "While we don't know when TikTok will be able to relaunch in India, we are confident in our persistence and hope to return here in the future."

In fact, after the ban was issued, Indian employees were told to focus on developing ByteDance's other applications, such as the productivity suite Lark, which are not blocked in India.

In addition, ByteDance has stopped all marketing in India and no longer promotes other services.

Relevant sources said that Indian employees will receive severance pay based on the "N+3" principle, which means four months' salary for every full year of service.

Reference Links:

• http://www.caixin.com/2021-01-28/101657122.html

• http://www.techweb.com.cn/it/2021-01-27/2823263.shtml

• https://www.163.com/dy/article/G1E5MG2S0511AGMA.html