Micro-blogging site Twitter Inc. plans to discontinue engineering work at its development centre in Bengaluru, a move that will result in some staff cuts, according to media reports.
The layoffs will impact less than 20 employees at the development centre, Reuters reported citing a source familiar with the matter. The employees were part of ZipDial, an Indian mobile communications start-up bought by Twitter last year.
The decision to halt global engineering work comes a year after the company announced plans to expand India operations, building local language products and increasing staff strength to 50.
Last year a Twitter official told ET the development centre would also develop local language products for non-English speaking countries such as those in Asia and Latin America.
"To begin with, the India engineering centre will focus on three things - build product that are unique and distinct to Indian market, appeals to local traditions customs and interests. Second, to make sure our app performs in a world-class manner, regardless of internet connection, and finally, to make sure it's accessible regardless of the device people are using, language they speak, income or location," a former Twitter official had toldET at the time.
Twitter has said India remains a key strategic market and it will continue to have a presence in Bengaluru. Twitter had 3,860 employees globally as of June 2016. However, it did not disclose the number of employees it had in India.
Twitter has had a challenging year with declining revenues and lacklustre user growth and stock price. The company has been focused on a turnaround under its Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, who took over as permanent CEO in October.
The company was recently rumoured to be up for sale although the company's management has dismissed those reports.
Twitter's revival efforts include a focus on video streaming of live events, as well as plans to relax its 140-character limit on Tweets by not counting usernames, links, photos, and videos.
With Reuters inputs