Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

No links with Taliban, says Huawei Technologies

Fakir Chand in Bangalore

Huawei Technologies India Ltd, the Bangalore-based only Chinese IT subsidiary in the country, on Monday denied media reports that its software professionals face deportation from India on account of its involvement in developing surveillance telecom equipment for the now deposed Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the recent past.

"First of all, we do not make any telecom hardware or equipment in the Indian subsidiary. The wholly owned subsidiary of the $2.6-billion Huawei Technologies from mainland China is only a dedicated software development facility, set up with a cumulative investment of $40 million," a company official told rediff.com in Bangalore on Monday.

"It's unthinkable for the company to get involved with an unlawful regime."

"It's totally untrue and baseless. We have no connections with the Taliban," a company spokesman said, but added that Pakistan was part of the marketing network of their parent company, a global leader in the telecom switching products.

"We are engaged in developing only cutting-edge technologies, including wideband switching, 3G mobile communications, wireless infrastructure, network management, data communications, intelligent networks and IP applications," said Huawei's senior executive (public relations), Gilbert J.

"Our research and development center in India is also the largest among four such centers we have the world over. Therefore, the question of developing equipment for anyone does not arise," he said.

Refuting media reports appearing in a section of the national press earlier in the day, company sources said that "at no point in time was there any inquiry or investigations carried on Huawei's India operations".

"As against what has been mentioned, the subsidiary was set up way years ago in the International Technology Park at Whitefield on the outskirts of Bangalore, and not in March this year, as reported. Secondly, only 150 software professionals of the total 500 employees are Chinese, who come to work at the center on rotation basis as their Indian visas are temporary in nature. While clearances themselves take longer time, in many of the cases extension of visas are hard to come by," he said.

While a few at the top level are on a one-year employment visa, majority of them are here on business visas which allow them to stay for only three months, with a provision for extension," the official stated, denying all of its employees were Chinese nationals, as reported in a national daily.

In view of the severe restrictions placed against even professionals from neighboring countries, especially China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, granting of visas is an elaborate and time-consuming process as it involves clearances from various agencies working in the external ministry and Union home ministry, besides the state governments.

Asked whether Indian Intelligence Bureau officials had visited their two facilities in Bangalore in the recent past to verify the nature of work being carried on or developed here, company sources said that nobody from the IB had come calling them at any time.

"We have nothing to hide. We are here in conformity with the laws governing foreign IT companies setting up software facilities. We follow the law of the land and carry on our work going by the rule book," sources said, adding that as a dedicated center for telecom projects, the Indian subsidiary undertakes projects given to it by the parent company.

Incidentally, Huawei India's CEO Jack Lu Ke and other top officials were not available for comment on the media reports as they are away in China for attending board meetings in connection with the finalisation of the global company's annual accounts for the current fiscal year.

At a time when global telecom giants like Lucent, Nortel, Motorola, and other European players have been posting negative growth and laying-off their employees by thousands over the months, Huawei has not only defied the slowdown, but is also well on its way to achieve about 70 per cent growth during the current fiscal year.

Though telecom vendors and service companies worldwide were among the first to feel the heat of the tech meltdown, especially in the US and Europe, Huawei has defied the downturn with consistent growth rates in all the four quarters of this year, thanks to the robust economic growth in mainland China, where it is the leader in the telecom sector with over 30 per cent share of the multi-billion-dollar market.

According to company's sources, Huawei is likely to post around $4.5 billion in total revenues by the end of this year, which is also its accounting year. "We have recruited about 3,000 engineers this year to take the total employees' strength 19,000 from 16,000 last year."

In a related development, the Indian facility has also achieved the SEI-CMM Level 4 recently. Considered to be one of the first few overseas IT companies to have accomplished such a feat within 18-months of commencing its operations, the assessment was conducted by KPMG, the global management and accounting firm, in accordance with the Software Engineering Institute's CMM assessment framework.

Additonal inputs: PTI

Money
Business News

Tell us what you think of this report