Huawei has lowered its 2020 revenue target in India by up to 50% and will cut 60-70% of its workforce there, ETTelecom reported, citing sources with knowledge of the matter.
Huawei's revenue in India was $1.2 billion in 2017, but since then it has been on a downward trend. One of the sources said that Huawei is now targeting $350 - $500 million in revenue by 2020, compared to the earlier target of around $700 - $800 million.
The revision to the performance forecast comes as Huawei does not expect any new business from its only two major telecom customers in India, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea. One of the sources said that Huawei has thus abandoned its regular, contract, and third-party employees in India.
According to a recent report in India's Economic Times, Huawei had already lost its telecom business in Rajasthan late last year and is on the verge of losing its business in Bharti Airtel to Ericsson in other parts of Tamil Nadu (RoTN).
Huawei employs nearly 700 people in India, with hundreds more hired through third-party companies, not including employees at the company's research and development center.
"Workforce in network support, field deployment, outsourcing, and sales department is being impacted majorly as there are no new projects or any clarity on new business from telecom operators," said one of these sources.
"They only need people for some annual maintenance contracts for existing businesses with telcos. People who are still with the company are worried about their jobs since there aren’t many openings in the market," another source said.
Huawei has also scaled back its consumer or mobile phone business following the US ban. It has yet to launch more products in India. There have been layoffs in both the network and consumer business units, and they still have a large workforce in R&D and Global Service Centers (GSCs), which play an important role around the world, one source said.
Huawei is also finding it difficult to expand its enterprise business in India, as it has not added any major customers recently, one of the sources said. The company provides enterprise networking products, including routers and switches, to various industries.
