Vodafone Plans To Reallocate German Arm's Business To India


Vodafone Plans To Reallocate German Arm's Business To India

Bangalore: Vodafone, one of the leading global mobile operators is planning to reallocate key businesses of its German arm to its shared service unit in India in order to cut costs, said  those executives aware of the development, as per ET reports.

The shared services subsidiary of Vodafone UK; Vodafone India Services Pvt Ltd (VISPL) might soon handle a host of back-office work for Vodafone Germany, including IT operations, network monitoring services, key administrative functions like book-keeping and dealing with complaints.

"Given the tough economic scene in Europe, our colleagues in Germany are looking to shift some jobs to India as work can be done in a more cost-efficient manner," said a senior Vodafone Group executive. However, the Vodafone Group Plc did not respond to the query on German arm business being shifted to VISPL.

Ben Padovan, head of media relations, responded via an emailed reply, "The announcement by Vodafone Germany is still subject to potentially many weeks of consultation until anything is finalized. We have no further comment to make on this from a group perspective."

VISPL runs its shared services in Pune and Ahmedabad and has a strong team of 4500 employees who does back-office work for Vodafone’s operating companies in UK, Qatar and Australia. Due to “language challenges” as quoted by the executive, VISPL staff is unlikely to indulge with Vodafone Germany customers.

Recently, Vodafone Germany said it would cut 500 jobs to stay competitive in a challenging mobile phone market and certain of these jobs would go to Romania and India.

The company’s European units can ensure as much as 30 percent in cost savings by acquiring critical back-end work done out of India, especially when telecom firms across Europe are hit by recessions , said Mahesh Uppal, director at Com First (India), a consultancy dealing in telecom regulatory affairs.

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