Aircel is laying off a part of its 8,000 employee workforce as the company inches closer to merging its wireless business with Anil Ambani-owned telco Reliance Communications. The development was first reported by ET, and the report claimed that around 700 employees were handed out pink slips. A spokesperson from Aircel confirmed the layoffs with MediaNama but denied that there were 700 employees being sent away. “They (layoffs) were a small fraction of what was reported by ET…there is a certain kind of business realignment happening,” the spokesperson added. “The referred news report is speculative and misleading. We would like to emphasize that amidst all that is happening in the sector, our focus is to build a profitable company, keeping the best interest of our customers and people,” Aircel said in a statement. The ET report added that employees were given a week’s notice along with a severance package which includes basic pay for the next six months. The downsizing of workforce is being carried out to remove duplicate human resources once the company merges its operations with RCOM, the report said quoting an unnamed source. Aircel is not the only company that is hit by rising competition in the telecom industry. Post launch of Reliance Jio, smaller operators are either looking for an exit or phasing out operations. In this month Telenor was reportedly in discussions with RCOM for merging its business unit and spectrum holding with the Aircel-RCOM merged entity. It was also in talks with Airtel for a…
