Yahoo! India’s R&D Centre in Bangalore, which was until recently its second largest outside of the US, has laid off some 600 employees during the last few weeks.
“While all those who have been laid off have been given six-month severance packages, the top performers have been asked to relocate to Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, California” said a source inside the company.
ConsolidatingA Yahoo! spokesperson declined to comment on the number of layoffs and the divisions that have been shut down. While the spokesperson also declined to confirm whether the Yahoo! India R&D Centre is still the company’s largest outside of the US, she made it clear that the Bangalore R&D Centre will continue to operate.
A statement from Yahoo! read “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.”
Posts on microblogging site Twitter confirmed the development with one post saying “Just heard from friends that Yahoo! India is laying off (almost) everyone. Indian start-ups should park a truck outside their office.”
From February 2009 to March 2013, Yahoo!’s India R&D headcount was scaled up from 500 to 2,000 across engineering and product organisation under the leadership of Shouvick Mukherjee, Vice-President & CEO of Yahoo! India R&D, who moved out soon after to Sunnyvale, California, to take over as Vice-President – Consumer Platforms.
“Over the last 2-3 years, tranches of 100 employees have been laid off in the R&D Centre with different units shutting down starting with Yahoo! Chat Room, standalone Messenger Services and Yahoo! Voice phone services,” said a Yahoo! insider.
An ex-Yahoo! employee confirmed the lay offs stating that “globally, everytime one of the R&D projects turns into a non-profit making project, it is shut down and the employees are laid off along with the staff in the India R&D Centre who supported that project.”