Huawei secures ₹150-Crore Deal with Bharati Airtel & Novartis India enters an exclusive sales and distribution pact with DRL

Chinese tech company Huawei has secured a telecom infrastructure expansion contract of  ₹150-Crores by India’s second biggest telecommunication company, Bharti Airtel. This deal is part of Airtel’s ongoing process of upgrading and expanding it’s National Long Distance Network, which is currently run by Huawei. Airtel had last year also had a similar contract with Huawei which was worth ₹300-crore.

Bharti Airtel gave this new order in compliance with the National Security Directive of Telecommunications  that allows continuation of old contracts. The order is said to be given as a part of annual maintenance contract.

Vodafone Idea has given a similar deal to ZTE for similar purposes worth $2 million. Huawei did not pick the purchase order of Vodafone Idea because of payment issues.

The contract between Airtel and Huawei comes despite the fact that Huawei is uncertain about its business in India and the conflict between India and China.

Novartis India 
Novartis India on Friday the 11th of February has entered into an exclusive sales and distribution agreement with Dr.Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL) for it’s established brands including pain relief, Voveran range, calcium range and methergine. This business decision will lead to the laying off of 400 employees because of role redundancies. The deal is said to have the aim to further broaden the access of these medicines beyond the current areas and to help more patients.

Novartis is committed to the Indian Market and has a large footprint in India with over 10000 employees, most of them part of employee services. The company has hired 1,600 employees across the Novartis divisions and companies in India since January of 2020 and plan to continue the hiring process into 2022.

Revenue from operations in FY21 stood at ₹381.4 crores, with the three brands and their line expansion contributing a major part of the Swiss drug market in India.

DRL is currently aggressively expanding in India and with this distribution pact it is expected for brands such as Voveran to boost its domestic business.

Written and collated by Rajat Pujar 
Written with input from The Times of India, Economic Times