Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE is closing its research and development business in India while reducing its service businesses in the country, aiming to optimize its costs as the equipment sales declined.
According to reports in Indian media, the Chinese company already cut most of its 60 R&D staff in India. This layoff is the result of ZTE India's recent integration of its Bangalore R&D unit and Indian engineering service center. ZTE's Indian engineering service center provides engineering support services to many telecom projects.
However, with the decrease of network equipment expense of telecom companies, the number of contracts also declined. ZTE's service business is more severely affected than R&D.
An executive from the company revealed that five project directors previously worked for the service and enterprise sales departments of ZTE India had resigned. Those included Dinesh Sharma and Shabbir Ahmed, two important members for ZTE's Bharti Airtel LTE network management project; Ashish Vaishya from the BSNL mobile network service vertical management project; Rajneesh Sharma, an enterprise sales executive; and Arvind Rangnekar, a project director of the service department.