Twitter
Twitter is laying off 20 engineers and shuttering operations of a Bangalore office.

SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — As more reports begin to circulate suggesting a partial or complete sale of Twitter, the social media platform is trimming down internationally.

Twitter is shutting down its engineering operations out of Bangalore, India, and it is laying off around 20 engineers in the process, the company said Wednesday.

“As part of our normal business review, we have decided to stop the global engineering work at the Bangalore development center,” a company spokesperson said. “We thank the impacted individuals, less than 20 persons, for their valuable contributions and are doing as much as we can to provide them a respectful exit from our company.”

The number is a very small percentage of the center’s overall staff. The spokesperson said that overall, Twitter employs over 3,800 people internationally, and it doesn’t break them down by markets.

Twitter will leave three offices in the country, in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. “Twitter remains committed to India as a strategic market for users, partners and advertisers,” the spokesperson said. India is one of Twitter’s fastest growing markets worldwide, although Twitter does not break out country-by-country revenues. “We continue to invest in key initiatives to further expand our audience, increase user engagement and drive revenue in this important market,” she added.

Twitter invested heavily in India with its 2015 acquisition of a startup called ZipDial. It was co-founded by Valerie Wagoner, a U.S. expat who was based in India. Wagoner has taken on a wider remit as Twitter’s senior director of growth. She also quietly relocated to the head office in San Francisco some time ago. Twitter has confirmed this is where Wagoner is still working.

ZipDial was built to address a uniquely Indian convention: people intentionally call others and hang up before they answer so that the recipient know she/he is trying to be reached, without incurring any extra calling charges. The missed call becomes an alert of sorts, and ZipDial worked with brands and others to essentially develop this into an advertising network and system to sign up for push-based notifications.

Other companies like Facebook have tapped into to international markets to offset slower user growth in more mature markets like the U.S. This seems to be what Twitter has been aiming for, too, but achieving a less strong effect.

In its last quarterly earnings, for example, Twitter reported international (non-U.S.) monthly active users of 247 million for Q2, up 4% year-over-year and up 2 million on the 245 million of Q1. That was only marginally better than 3% growth in the U.S.