Tik Tok Shutdown in India 27 Jan 2021 Updates – Parent Company ByteDance Reduces Workforce with Massive Layoffs

TikTok's global interim head Vanessa Pappas and vice president of global business solutions Blake Chandley informed about reducing the team in India and cutting down the employees.

Written by: Staff Edited by: Deepti Ratnam

Published: January 27, 2021, 5:27 PM IST

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https://www.india.com/technology/tik-tok-shutdown-in-india-27-jan-2021-updates-parent-company-bytedance-reduces-workforce-with-massive-layoffs-4360746/ Copy

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Chinese social media company ByteDance has announced the closure of its business in India. In an email sent to employees. Bytedance has written to its employees informing them about the loss of business. The Indian government has announced a temporary ban on Bytedance’s TikTok and Helo mobile apps last week, and only after this announcement by India has Bytedance informed its employees to cease operations in India. TikTok’s global interim head Vanessa Pappas and vice president of global business solutions Blake Chandley informed about reducing the team in India and cutting down the employees.

The email written to employee’s states –

“We’ve cut expenses, while still paying benefits. However, we simply cannot responsibly stay fully staffed while our apps remain un-operational. We are fully aware of the impact that this decision has for all of our employees in India, and we empathize with our team.”

Further added –

“While we don”t know when we will make a comeback in India, we are confident in our resilience, and desire to do so in times to come.”

The company issued a farewell letter which says that the company is discontinuing the Vigo and Vigo Lite apps. The company has said that users can transfer the data of these apps to TikTok as well. According to a report by Tech Crunch, there were 4 million monthly active users of the Vigo Video app and Vigo Lite had 1.5 million monthly active users. From 31 October 2020, both these apps will stop working in India.

The Indian government banned 118 apps including PUBG and TikTok after a tiff with Chinese soldiers in Galwan Valley. Since then the Indian government imposed a temporary ban on many mobile applications of China and now it seems the ban is permanent.

According to a spokesperson at ByteDance, even after many efforts, the company haven’t received a clear direction from the Indian Government.

“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 over 2,000 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.”