



In the last week of September, shortly after Musical.ly, a global short-video sharing platform, announced its merger with TikTok, the company’s India team invited media for an interaction with some of the platform’s most popular creators and their business head Raj Mishra.Last week, the press was told a team reshuffle is underway and there’s no company spokesperson available to talk to the media. Sources close to the company shared this was on account of ongoing instability at the management level.In July, ET Magazine met the India team of Meitu , the tech company behind popular apps such as BeautyPlus. The team that started its India operations with 10 people in 2016 had reduced to three key people by this time. The country head had left in mid-2017 and no replacement has been found.There are similar stories of high attrition at companies such as Cheetah Mobile, We-Chat Alibaba and a few of its subsidiaries. The churn at the senior level has disbanded entire teams in cases like Cheetah Mobile and reduced team size to half in cases like WeChat, Alibaba, and UCWeb. What’s common among all of these companies? They’re all China-based tech giants. Alibaba is the world’s largest retail company. TikTok’s parent ByteDance recently ousted Uber to become the world’s most valuable startup. Meitu claims more than a billion downloads across its gamut of photoediting apps.These companies set foot in India 4-5 years ago to acquire their next billion users. Alibaba came in through the investment route, acquiring stakes in Paytm, BigBasket and Zomato. The others set up offices across Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai to build India operations. They did acquire users. Currently, TikTok is the third-most downloaded app on Android in India, UCWeb’s UC Browser is sixth and Meitu’s flagship app BeautyPlus is 25th on this list. At the same time, their India offices have also seen high churn rates, especially at the top level.A bunch of former employees at these companies cited a set of common reasons for their short stints at the respective firms. “We were assigned supervisors based in China. Some of them were fresh out of college but acted like they knew everything. Sometimes they’d default on paying vendors and we ended up burning bridges with local suppliers. They didn’t understand the flavour of the Indian market. Sometimes, it’d take a lot of convincing to dissuade them from publishing adult content as part of promotional campaigns,” says a former Meitu employee, who asked not to be named.“You would have sent your manager in China a presentation and there would be no feedback. You wouldn’t know what they were presenting to seniors there. Overnight, they’d change the back-end codes and the tech team here would get frustrated,” recalls a former employee of Cheetah Mobile. “There was no transparency. They wouldn’t share any analytics with us. We were not learning anything on the job because we weren’t allowed to make any decisions,” says another person, who asked that neither he nor his former employer be named, echoing a common strain. Queries sent to Meitu, TikTok, Alibaba and Cheetah Mobile regarding talent retention issues didn’t elicit any response. Most former employees either refused to talk or wished to remain anonymous.This behaviour wasn’t stemming from the fear of burning bridges with Chinese employers alone. One of them explains: “When these companies hire you, they ask how much you want. You quote X. They offer you 5X. That makes them God. And nobody dares to speak against God.” Headhunters, however, are more forthcoming. “Chinese companies are not perceived as good employers,” says K Sudarshan, India MD at global executive search firm EMA Partners. People are not eager to join these companies, he adds.A lot of issues in work culture faced by former employees point to one thing--lack of trust. Navnit Singh, chairman and regional MD of India at global executive search firm Korn Ferry, says it has to do with China being a communist society. He theorises that it makes you trust no one but yourself. “So, many are suspicious of outsiders.” India is a lucrative market for the neweconomy Chinese companies . And they have the funds to invest, so they hire aggressively. “But they don’t like to invest in talent for the long term if they don’t see shortterm gain,” says Singh. So they fire as aggressively as they hire.Such issues of culture clash are not uncommon when the first wave of one nation’s companies begins to expand overseas. Similar issues were common when Japanese car companies first started doing business in the US or when South Korean electronics companies expanded globally. “Things have become better with Japanese companies like Nomura in India now, where you see stability at the top level. Once they trust you, they trust you completely,” says EMA’s Sudarshan.With time, companies learn and employees also figure out what to expect, and there tends to be a convergence towards more neutral, global work practices. Besides, not all Chinese tech companies have high churn issues outside Mainland China. Established ones such as Lenovo and new-age firms such as Xiaomi are some of the exceptions, say headhunters. Xiaomi has been working on creating an open, flat work culture at its India office. “We work as a local company and the company works on global work values. Our senior leadership team has come together from various work cultures such as the US, UK and Singapore,” says Muralikrishnan B, COO at Xiaomi India, talking of employees who have stuck with the company since its launch in India.Rahul Agarwal, CEO & MD of Lenovo India, says the high churn is more a function of nature of the business as opposed to the company’s country of origin. “The mobile market is difficult to navigate. The rise of Chinese tech giants is a new phenomenon. It’ll take time for them to establish their work culture.” At present, you won’t find India’s top talent going to many of these Chinese companies. “They’re not considered companies you build a career at,” says Korn Ferry’s Singh. “But they may be, tomorrow.”: On 12th November '18, a day after this story was published, TikTok, after refusing to participate in the story the previous week, reached out for clarification, and said: "Our local operations and management team, including our company spokesperson Raj Mishra, are firmly in place since the launch of TikTok in India and well positioned to continue driving TikTok’s growing popularity in the country." ET Magazine further asked TikTok to share details of TikTok's team size at the time of launch in India and the current team size. TikTok declined to share these details.