Publishing software maker Quark has retrenched around 150 employees at its development centre in India."We have laid-off 150-odd employees at our India development centre in Chandigarh," a company official said.The company dismisses around 75 employees every year after a performance appraisal. The lay-offs are a part of the annual exercise where around 7-10% of the employees with low performance parametres are shown the door, the official said.The lay-offs this year were higher because "we closed two projects that we felt were not promising enough," the official said, adding some of the promising engineers who were part of the projects have been absorbed in the company.The latest move has brought down the total strength at Quark's India development centre to 1,250.