X’s India Revenue Takes a Dive: 90% Drop Signals Trouble Ahead
The Global Giant, X crop Indian Subsidiary, saw a plunge of 89.8% in revenue in India, amounting to $2.51 million, for the year ended March. This is according to documents filed in the social media market by the Tesla-owned entity. This decrease is after generating a revenue of $24.7 million in the last fiscal year. Given this, X reduced its cost in India radically from $20 million to $2.2 million to bear the impact of the downturn.
But even at a revenue of $5.45 million, it made a P&L of only $380,000 against $3.62 million in the region for the previous year. Musk has in the past singled out India as an important market for Twitter, where he said it is the third largest market for the company. The revenue fell by 90 percent as the revenue was $210 million from the $2080 million.
It is still unknown why the company has seen a revenue decrease but could be linked to general cuts seen across the business or issues the platform experiences when it comes to keeping advertisers on board across the world. He has not responded to follow-up requests on the issues as to whether he has any this or that within the one week according to X’s reports where reach out for comments were made.
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Reasons why X’s Revenue Falls?
It is important to understand the reasons why X’s India revenue fell by 90%, thefollowing are the reasons that may have contributed to this downfall –
1. Lay Off the Ad Sales Team
New management has laid off X’s ad sales team, which heavily impacted the revenue of advertisements. There was a lack of specialized salespeople, which led to weak client relations, and eventually, everything went into disarray without attracting and retaining advertisers.
2. Decline of Net Profit
X’s Indian subsidiary said that net profit fell sharply, coming down to a meager Rs 3 crore from the Rs 30 crore reported in the last fiscal year. Such a decline was a testament to the heavy adverse impact plummeting ad revenues have on bottom lines generally.
3. Deep cuts in employee benefits
The company cut employee benefits by 95%, a direct result of cost-cutting after downsizing its workforce. Firing nearly all 200 employees in India depressed morale and limited its capacity to handle ads.
4. Worldwide Ad Spend Decline
Worldwide, ad revenue for X decreased 24% in the first quarter of 2024 compared with the prior year. Since these declines represented the global impact of the company’s slowdown in advertising investments, a similar decrease could not be any less shocking to the Indian subsidiary, as most of the unit’s revenue comes from its ads sold to users.
5. Advertiser Boycotts
High-profile brands such as IKEA and Microsoft boycotted X over concerns about content moderation and brand safety. Loss of trust led to lower ad buys, exacerbating further revenue problems for X in India.
6. Litigation against the Advertisers’ Association
X sued the World Federation of Advertisers on claims that it was in a conspiracy to choke off advertising revenues. Such lawsuit conflict resulted in the alienation of potential advertisers and further strained the relations, resulting in the loss of even more ad revenue.
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7. Negative Sentiment about Marketing
It is noted that 26% of the marketers have cut their ad spending for X for 2025. This all-negative sentiment reflects broader concerns inside the industry regarding the direction and reliability of the platform, which after all has sharply declined its revenue in India.
Conclusion
X’s Indian subsidiary faced a revenue decline to the tune of as much as 90 percent. This shows significant challenges in retaining relationships with advertisers. The cuts, the wide layoffs, and the general overall ad spending around the world dragged the business down. It will need to put these issues right so it can regain confidence and stability in the market, in this case, India – which is a critical market for the company.
