IWMBuzz earlier reported about the fate of Bytedance employees hanging in balance with the Government of India sending a permanent ban notice.
For the uninitiated, the Indian government had earlier announced an interim ban on multiple Chinese apps including TikTok over security concerns. The step was also announced amid rising border tensions between India and China, which is not showing any immediate sign of rapprochement.
When the interim ban was on, there was a silver lining of the operations resuming post deliberation and implementation of necessary changes. However, with the permanent ban notice, hope turned bleak.
As reported earlier by us, though banned, Bytedance India employees continued to stay on its payroll and worked in diverse roles, as per sources.
But, the latest development, as confirmed by our credible sources, is that Bytedance India has officially announced massive layoffs.
We hear that a mail was sent by Vanessa (currently interim Head of TikTok globally) stating that the organisation is forced to reduce the size of the team and will only be retaining a small number of critical roles in India.
Bytedance owns apps like TikTok, Helo among others.
We reached out to Bytedance for an official comment but did not receive any till the time of going to press.
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Updated: Later we received an official comment from Bytedance.
We have worked steadfastly to comply with the Government of India order issued on June 29, 2020. We continually strive to make our apps comply with local laws and regulations and do our best to address any concerns they have. It is therefore disappointing that in the ensuing seven months, despite our efforts we have not been given a clear direction on how and when our apps could be reinstated. It is deeply regretful that after supporting our 2000+ employees in India for more than half a year, we have no choice but to scale back the size of our workforce. We look forward to receiving the opportunity to relaunch TikTok and support the hundreds of millions of users, artists, story-tellers, educators and performers in India.