Indian tech start-ups woo laid off Yahoo! employees

8 Oct 2014

Tech entrepreneurs in India’s burgeoning start-up ecosystem may benefit from internet giant Yahoo! having laid off 400 employees in Bangalore, at its largest engineering facility outside its California headquarters.

Indian blog NextBigWhat earlier reported news of the layoffs at Yahoo!’s Software Development Centre as part of the company’s efforts to consolidate operations, and comments following the story openly court the laid off employees.

“Mobile Developers, we at Flatchat are hiring 🙂 download the app and chat with us on the app itself,” Gaurav Munjal posted.

“We at Aurus Network are looking for people to work with us to build the next big thing in education – Superprofs!,” Nikhil Kulkarni added.

“If you are looking to work on a major disruptive product, lets connect 🙂 ThePorter is hiring!” Vikas Choudhary replied.

Nearly every other response is about a tech company seeking staff.

The Wall Street Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported the number of layoffs, which make up nearly one-third of Yahoo!’s staff in Bangalore. Some senior executives have been offered positions at Yahoo!’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

NextBigWhat also reported on the number of jobs cut, but overstated the size of the layoffs, according to the person familiar with the matter.

In a statement yesterday, Yahoo! said it would continue to have a presence in Bangalore.

“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,” Yahoo! said.

“To this effect, we’re making some changes to the way we operate in Bangalore leading to consolidation of certain teams into fewer offices.”

The layoffs follow activist investor Starboard Value LP having publicly pressured Yahoo! more than a week ago to reduce what it referred to as a “bloated” cost structure.

Yahoo! sign via Shutterstock

Tina Costanza was a journalist and sub-editor at Silicon Republic

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