Reports have come in just now that as a part of its overall “consolidation” plan, Yahoo has started laying off personnel in its international offices. The lay off has started wit its SDC in Bangalore, India.
The report, first reported by Next Big What, further says that most of the employees in the Yahoo engineering team have been left untouched i.e. those, who maintain the Yahoo.in domain and its properties, are not a part of the lay off.
Yahoo is giving a severance package of 5 months (in extreme cases, 10 months) and the d-day for employees is November 7th.
TechCrunch also received an official reply from Yahoo saying,
As we ensure that Yahoo is on a path of sustainable growth, we’re looking at ways to achieve greater efficiency, collaboration and innovation across our business…To this effect, we’re making some changes to the way we operate in Bangalore leading to consolidation of certain teams into fewer offices. Yahoo will continue to have a presence in India and Bangalore remains an important office.
Lately, Yahoo has been acting strange on the India front. It recently acquired an Indian startup, BookPad and now it is suddenly starting its international lay off plans from India. Yahoo also tried establishing an India-specific social network, SpotM, which failed miserably and was ultimately shut down.
The number of people being laid off has been confirmed at 400. Earlier, Next Big What had claimed the number to be around 2000, which, if had been correct, would have counted among company’s biggest ever layoffs (the last 2000 layoff was in 2012).
