Final nail in the coffin for TikTok in India? ByteDance fires entire India staff

Chinese short video-making app TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has reportedly sacked its entire India staff — about 40 employees, handing out pink slips to them with February 28 mentioned as their last working day. Also Read: What Is Seedream 4.0? The Google Gemini AI Nano Banana Rival By TikTok Parent Company

According to a report in The Economic Times, ByteDance, whose TikTok app was banned in India in June 2020 over national security concerns, told its employees they would receive between six and nine months of the severance package. However, most of the staff will only get three-month severance. Also Read: TikTok’s Return To India Not On The Table, Confirms IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

In June 2020, the government banned TikTok along with 59 other Chinese apps citing security concerns. Back then, ByteDance took some time in a hope that the government would roll back its decision. However, when nothing changed for the company’s future in India, it decided to sack a majority of its employees in India, except for a few people who were supposed to help ByteDance navigate discussions with the government about TikTok’s re-entry. Moreover, ByteDance’s music streaming app Resso was still available in India. Those last remaining employees are now being let go of, according to the report. Also Read: Is TikTok Returning to India? Website Goes Live Again, But App Still Missing

The report cited a source saying that employees who have been fired were told that the Indian operations are unlikely to restart “because of the government’s stance on Chinese apps.”

We have taken the decision to close our India remote sales support hub, which was put in place at the end of 2020 to provide support to our global and regional sales teams. We greatly appreciate these employees and their impact on our company, and will ensure they are supported at this difficult time,” the report quoted a TikTok spokesperson as saying.

India has banned over 300 Chinese apps, including WeChat, Shareit, Helo, Likee, UC News, Bigo Live, and UC Browser among others since the first crackdown in 2020.

The government also banned PUBG Mobile alongside, but after Krafton — the South Korean company that holds the IP rights to PUBG — stepped in to shrug off the linkage to the Chinese company Tencent Games, the government agreed. In 2021, Krafton announced the launch of Battlegrounds Mobile India, a slightly censored version of PUBG with features that were in line with the government’s expectations. However, the government last year banned Battlegrounds Mobile India, as well, citing the same reasons.

Meanwhile, US Senator Michael Bennett has urged Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to immediately remove TikTok from their app stores, calling it an unacceptable risk to American national security. The US plans to ban the Chinese short video-making app TikTok nationwide, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a vote next month on a bill to completely block the platform. The US government officials have time and again cited the ban on TikTok in India to push for the ban on the app in the US.

— Written with inputs from IANS