Vodafone India to recruit 600 hands this year, readying IPO

Notwithstanding the uncertainty in the telecom industry and the hefty retrospective tax liability over its acquisition of Hutchison's Indian operations, Vodafone India says it will recruit 600 direct employees this year and that it is planning to come out with an initial public offering (IPO) in view of strong scope for growth.

The announcement comes at a time when some global telecom firms in India - Norwegian telecom firm Telenor and Russian conglomerate Sistema, a shareholder in mobile operator Shyam Sistema - have threatened to shut operations, while UAE-based Etisalt has already wound up operations.

''There is a lot of volatility in the telecom sector, but there is strong scope for growth. It's always growing and it's also a challenging environment,'' Vodafone India chief executive officer and managing director Marten Pieters said.

These will be direct employees, even as it outsources a lot of jobs, he added.

The GSM service provider, a unit of the British mobile phone group Vodafone Plc, has about 10,000 direct employees in the country. The company's attrition rate was 16 per cent in this year, compared with 19 per cent a year ago, and much lower than the industry attrition of 22 per cent.

As on February end, the country, with a total population of about 1.25 billion, had over 911 million wireless subscribers.