India's Reliance Communications to Axe 6,000 Jobs in Major Restructuring Move

Indian telecom major Reliance Communications is planning to slash 37% of its workforce by the end of July as part of a restructuring that would outsource the company's call centre and shared services operations.

The country's fourth-largest telecom company currently employs 15,000 people, out of which some 6,000 employees will lose their jobs, India's Economic Times reported. Nearly 4,500 of these people are in call centre operations, and the rest of the job cuts are from the shared services teams.

The move comes as the company plans to exit non-core businesses and cut costs by outsourcing its call centre and shared services operations. Reliance Communications is about to sign deals worth about 7bn (£68m, $117m, €86m) Indian rupees with two third-party service providers.

"These 6,000-odd employees will migrate to the rolls of the two third-party service providers, which will lower RCOM's employee count to well under 10,000," a top company official told Economic Times.

"The BPO and shared services businesses were highly inefficient and not adding any value to RCOM's bottom line, which is why we decided to outsource them and purely focus on core telco issues like customer acquisitions, sales, distribution, marketing and brand building to create a leaner organisation that is more cost-efficient," the official said.

With the move, the company expects to save about 2bn rupees per year in staff salaries, according to the newspaper.

It is currently facing a huge debt at 340bn rupees, after repaying about 61bn rupees raised through an offering of shares and warrants. It is looking to sell its direct-to-home TV businesses and monetise real estate holdings to pare debt.

Reliance Communications is headed by Anil Ambani, brother of India's richest man Mukesh Ambani.