TikTok owner ByteDance, based out of China, is cutting the workforce at its Indian office following the Indian government notification that the ban would remain.
ByteDance said to its Indian employees that decreasing its organization’s capacity and holding only the crucial roles will retain only the essential positions.
The job reductions at the TikTok owner’s India office begins soon after ByteDance stated it is attempting all ways to complying with regulations in India after TikTok was banned last year.
The Indian government put a moratorium on TikTok and 118 other apps linked to China for pretending a threat to its security.
TechCrunch’s article, indicating a source intimate with the matter, paints a gloomy picture for ByteDance that has gripped up its desires that it would perform a comeback in India’s growing app market.
The organization announced it was “left with no choice” after the latest notification from the Indian government restated the ban will remain and has shifted permanently.
“It is deeply regretful that after holding our 2000+ employees in India for more than half a year, we have no option but to scale back the size of our workforce. We look forward to getting the opportunity to relaunch TikTok and support the hundreds of millions of users, artists, storytellers, educators, and performers in India,” a TikTok spokesperson said.
The job cut may be a permanent one because ByteDance is undoubtedly beginning to realize that the ban is not continuing to be lifted.
“We initially expected that this situation would be short-lived and that we would be ready to fix this soon. Seven months later, we notice that has not been the case,” TikTok CEO Vanessa Pappas and vice president of global business Blake Chandlee said ByteDance employees operating in India in a letter acquired by TechCrunch. “Many of you have patiently waited to hear how this would play out, which has been very stressful. Thank you for your continued confidence and trust in us,” they wrote.
After executing the ban, ByteDance reportedly told its employees to focus on other apps that the company appears in India.
One such app is Lark that offers productivity tools and was not banned by the government. But while the employees were using to direct their energies towards Lark and other apps, ByteDance asked them not to talk about these apps in public to bypass the risk of them getting in the limelight.
Otherwise, these apps would have had to give the fortune of TikTok in India. The report further stated that ByteDance even ended its marketing campaigns to evade any attention towards whatever was left of the company after TikTok was blocked.
Facebook and Google plunged into the fray with their apps. One of them is Instagram Reels, which allows an interface similar to TikTok and leverages the country’s sound user base. The disappointed TikTok users flocked to Reels to continue with their endeavors.
