Meta India faces heat of global layoffs; numbers unclear

The Meta layoff has reached the Indian doors, as a marginal number of employees of the company’s India workforce have been laid off across verticals. The development comes a day after Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of social media app Meta, while taking complete responsibility for the layoff, announced that the company will be laying off as many as 11,000 employees, or 13% of its workforce globally, to make the company capital efficient. This is the first and the largest layoff in Meta’s history of 18 years. This is also the largest layoff this year. The company has also extended the hiring freeze through Q1 of FY23. 

A news report quoted sources saying that employees in Meta’s India team have been laid off marginally, however the numbers remain unclear. Meta has as many as 400 employees in India, and is one of the most profitable markets of the company with more than 200 million users of WhatsApp and Instagram. Meta is the parent company of social media platforms Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. 

Last week, Ajith Mohan, who took charge as the India head of Meta in 2019 resigned to join the rival Snap, which is the parent company the of social media app Snapchat. 

Notably, despite a decline in Meta’s revenue and a dismal performance by the company in the July to September quarter owing to a competitive advertising market, Facebook India Online Services’ advertising revenue witnessed a growth by 74% to ₹16,189 crore in FY22, as against ₹9,326 crore in FY21. During the fiscal year-ended March 2022, the company’s net profit also witnessed a growth 132% year-on-year (YoY) of ₹297 crore as against ₹136 crore in FY20. Meta India’s total income in FY22 stood at ₹2,324 crore. 

However, the company is facing tough regulatory scrutiny by the Indian government over the violation of data privacy norms. Moreover, both Facebook India and WhatsApp have embroiled into legal tussel with the competition commission of India, the country’s market watchdog over anti-competitive activities. 

Meanwhile, Meta has announced that the company is working with the respective local governments to provide employment benefits for the sacked employees. The company will pay 16 weeks of base salary, plus two additional weeks for every year of service, with no cap, to the sacked employees.

Zuckerberg said the company is in need to become more capital efficient and has shifted the focus to high-priority growth areas like AI discovery engine, advertisements, business platforms and metaverse. “We’ve cut costs across our business, including scaling back budgets, reducing perks, and shrinking our real estate footprint. We’re restructuring teams to increase our efficiency,” Zuckerberg said. 

Over the past few months, the global tech landscape has witnessed massive layoffs and a hiring freeze amidst a looming global recession. Last week, the social media platform Twitter, which was recently acquired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, sacked 50% of its workforce. In October, while the software major Microsoft fired as many as 1,000 employees, or 1%, in the third round of downsizing. Snap, which is the parent company of social media platform Snapchat, sacked 20% of its workforce to restructure its business.