Bharti Airtel, a telecom service provider
with presence in Asia and Africa, has reported that its employees have come
down by 3,032 to 20,726 in Q2 2011-12 from 23,758 in Q2 2010-11.

 

The reduction of employees was part of the
company’s focus to improve profitability and flexibility.

 

In India, Airtel employees were reduced by
1,776 to 15,611 from 17,387, while African employees decreased by 1,256 to
5,115 from 6,371.

 

Today, Bharti Airtel posted 13.4 percent
increase in revenue in Q2 2011-12 at $3.78 billion compared with $3.28 billion
in Q2 previous fiscal.

 

The reduction in manpower did not assist
the mobile major to improve its profit. Profit of Airtel plummeted by 38
percent to $225 million in Q2 2011-12 from $358 million in Q2 2010-11.

 

This has been seventh consecutive quarter
in which Bharti Airtel posted lower net profit. Bharti Airtel undertook a
series of top level changes in the management to improve revenue and profit in
these highly competitive markets.

 

Recently, Airtel went through a
restructuring exercise that enabled the company to merge its wireless, fixed line DTH and
broadband units. These groups together bring in 90 percent of the operator’s
revenues.

 

Bharti Airtel is not the only company to
undergo restructuring and job cuts in the recent past. It seems to have become
a trend in contemporary scenario of debts, low ARPU and huge amount of capex. Many
other telcos like Aircel have also taken the same route to curb these issues.

 

Recently phone major Nokia announced plans
to cut 3,500 jobs in its technical operations in Europe and the US as the company shut down its
Romania’s factory. Moreover, Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry smartphones also announced global workforce cut by 2,000 employees. Cisco had
also joined the league of companies that had prune their expenses by cutting
manpower.

 

By Rashi Varshney
[email protected]