AOL India lays off hundreds of employees

New Delhi: AOL is in the midst of a big cut in its workforce, including those based in India, suggest media reports.

Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital reports that the company is drastically cutting staff at its India unit. According to All Things Digital's sources, AOL will lay off about 400 employees in Bangalore and also transition 300 more to contractors working for their partners.

This cut will reduce AOL India's strength to about 200. AOL has about 5000 employees worldwide, post an earlier round of lay offs that resulted in 2,300 lost jobs.

The latest lay offs targeted employees in the content side of AOL. This was necessitated due to the recent acquisition of Huffington Post and the subsequent overlaps. Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington will lead the content operations of AOL.

AOL suffered sharp declines in advertising sales and dial-up subscriptions in the fourth quarter of 2010, driving overall revenue down 26 per cent.