India's STL lets go of 100 employees, including senior execs – reports

STL Technologies, a prominent Indian telecom vendor, has asked 100 of its employees, including senior executives, to leave the company because of restructuring as well as declining business, according to media reports.

The senior executives who have recently left the company include Chief Marketing Officer Manish Sinha; CFO Pankaj Aggarwal; Chief Information Officer Manuj Desai; and Jitendra Balakrishnan, who was the head of R&D. The company also witnessed the departure of its former CEO KS Rao last year, while Chief Operating Officer Anand Agarwal and CFO Mihir Modi left in 2021.

STL started its journey as an optical fiber cable manufacturer and later started offering other solutions, including 5G, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and open RAN solutions, among others.

Its business is now divided into three divisions – optical networking, global services, and digital and technology solutions. Almost 80% of the revenue continues to come from the optical networking division. 

Expanding manufacturing

The company's managing director, Ankit Agarwal, had mentioned in an interview with Bloomberg earlier this year that STL would be investing 8 billion Indian rupees (US$96 million) by the end of the current financial year to expand its optical fiber manufacturing capabilities. Last month, STL announced an investment of $56 million to open its optic fiber and cable manufacturing unit in South Carolina. 

Today, STL also launched Estelan, an end-to-end solution in fiber and copper cable connectivity to help businesses modernize and digitalize their network infrastructure. Earlier this year, the company had announced a foray into the IT services industry with STL Digital.

The company, meanwhile, announced the sale of its telecom products software business to the US-based Skyvera, an affiliate of TelcoDR, earlier this year. It also divested its data center connectivity business IDS to Hexatronic last year.

The news of STL Technologies handing pink slips to 100 employees doesn't bode well for the burgeoning Indian telecom vendor ecosystem. The company is seen as one of the few Indian companies that have made a mark in the global sector. The government is, meanwhile, trying to push the sector to reduce its reliance on imported telecom gear and to promote the principle of self-reliance.