New Delhi: The strategy of reducing labor force to beat business losses has been a practice by Indian IT and BPO companies for months. Now it seems to be the turn of television service providers. Tata Sky, one of the major providers of DTH service in India has cut down its work force as part of a restructuring process, reported The Economic Times. They have now removed about five percent of their employees who were working in different departments of the company.

Vikram Kaushik, Managing Director and CEO, Tata Sky, said that they have recently reorganized the company by consolidating operations across India in an effort to maximize the quality and maintain consistency in operations. "In respect to the overall objective, the company has initiated reorganizing of some functions to bring in efficiencies across all levels. These changes will help streamline operations and optimize performance level, taking advantage of the present DTH industry," he noted.

"As part of the reorganizing exercise less than five percent of the staff were impacted. However, staff who had the requisite skill sets were provided with opportunities to move to other departments within Tata Sky and/or to other group companies," Vikram mentioned.

Most of the staff who have been removed were from the company's installation and after-sales service teams. According to the company officials, there are 1,900 employees in Tata Sky, which includes people on the payrolls as well as employees on contract as of May '08.

It is believed that the company was struggling with huge losses due to high customer acquisition costs and the recent price war in the DTH space. And that forced them to cut jobs.

However, a person who sacked from the position says "Several people have been sacked from the company across the country. Some of us have been able to find employment with other companies but there are others who are still jobless. We were all good performers and were sacked without any reason. When we asked Tata Sky for reasons, the company said that the move is not related to our performances. They said it's because some of the positions have become redundant."