Yahoo lays off several employees in India, axes B'lore's techies

Bangalore, Oct 8:

, the one-time internet giant has now decided to cut down the size of its operations and the biggest slice was made in Bangalore.

The city's engineering facility, which is also the largest outside its California headquarters, has been "consolidated" and certain teams have been sheltered in fewer offices. The presence would not be big, but it would be there, said an inside source.

The move is reported to have come after activist investor Starboard Value LP publicly pressured Yahoo to cut what it referred to as a "bloated" cost structure, states Reuters.

The idea of cutting down operations, however, is being linked to the leadership of Marissa Mayer who has been weighing layoffs in Bangalore since her tenure started.

With close to 2000 employees in the Bangalore office itself, Meyer was considering channelizing some of them to Sunnyvale, California, to unite more of Yahoo's product development at the home base. That way she would have direct control over her two pet projects of products and engineering.

It is to be mentioned that the entire engineering and product team will be shifted to Sunnyvale, California. However, the 400 employees who have been laid off have been offered severance packages.

Meanwhile, Yahoo issued a statement 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."

Ironically, online production lines like ebay and flipkart are speading their wings in Bangalore, a multi million dollar company is shortening its staff for better production. It goes without saying, that shutting of Engineering and product in India is a big setback to outsourcing to India from US.

In 2013 too, Yahoo had shut its operations in bagmane tech park in Bangalore. If sources are to be believed about 600-700 have been laid off.

OneIndia News