Lycos pulls out of India, asks staff to leave

BANGALORE: Lycos Asia, one of the region's largest Internet networks, said on

Friday it was closing its Indian operations and retrenching 17 workers as part

of 200 job cuts in Asia, but its portal for the country would stay open.

"We are consolidating our operations to Singapore from nine Asian

countries, including India, due to the difficult business conditions,"

Feroz Siddiqui, country director of Lycos India, told Reuters from Bombay.

"We are shutting our physical presence in India and asked all staff to

leave," he said. "We are pulling out of India but the Indian portal

will be maintained from the Singapore headquarters."

Lycos Asia said on Thursday it had cut 60 per cent of its total workforce as

advertising revenue shrinks in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the

United States. The company - which operates portals across Southeast Asia, India

and Greater China - is a $50 million joint venture between Singapore

Telecommunications and Terra Lycos SA of Spain.

Lycos India's staff are based in Bombay and Bangalore, India's technology

capital. During its launch last year, Lycos said that India would play a major

role in its Asian expansion. Lycos began its Indian operations about 15 months

ago, following Yahoo Inc. and CMGI-owned Altavista.

Besides Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and Altavista, Lycos India faces competition

from home-grown portals like Rediff.com and Sify.com, owned by Satyam Infoway in

India's small but fast-growing Internet market. Indian consumer Internet portal

indya.com, recently acquired by media mogul Rupert Murdoch's STAR Network, cut

35 per cent of staff last August in a second round of layoffs.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.