China's LeEco says no plans to exit Indian market

By Samantha Kareen Nair and Arnab Paul

BENGALURU (Reuters) - Chinese electronics maker LeEco said on Friday it has no plans to exit operations in India, refuting a media report which said the company was laying off most of its staff in preparation to leave.

"India is one the most strategic markets for LeEco," the company said in a statement, adding that it had no plans to exit the market and is gearing up for the launch of its next generation television in the country.

The Economic Times had reported earlier on Friday that the company was firing 85 percent of its Indian workforce and was looking to exit is operations in the country. http://bit.ly/2m2kNDA

LeEco, which entered the Indian market in 2016, did not mention job cuts and said its resource headcount in India is "well aligned to the scale of operations envisioned and in line with industry benchmarks".

"The company at the moment has over 80 employees in India. At the end of last year, we had around 350 employees," a company representative told Reuters.

LeEco chief executive Jia Yueting, in a letter to the staff in November, warned of a cash crunch citing expansion at an "unprecedented rate". Leshi Internet Information and Technology Corp Beijing is its listed smart TV subsidiary.

A former employee with LeEco at its Mumbai office, who decided to quit in just six months, told Reuters the CEO's letter had left him disillusioned and triggered his resignation.

"I joined the company in mid 2016, and there were a lot of promised projects in the pipeline. The projects were all stalled and that got me worried," said the former employee, who did not want to be identified.

(Reporting By Samantha Kareen Nair and Arnab Paul in Bengaluru; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)