Huawei, one of the largest global telecom equipment manufacturers from China, wants to gradually spread its ownership by offering stocks to overseas employees, including in India.

According to a senior official, Huawei has already given shares to some Indian employees at its Bangalore facility, where more than 1,000 are employed. A Huawei spokesperson said 80% of the company stocks were held by its employees.

The company is privately held, and has about 40,000 employees across 100 countries. In the Indian context, offering shares to locals will help the company neutralise criticism that the Chinese army has an influence over the operations of the company, and hence it is a threat to India's security.

In the past, the home ministry had said Huawei could pose a threat to our security. Huawei had refuted this charge, saying it was a global firm, with 58% of its turnover coming from outside China last year. By offering shares to employees overseas, Huawei wants to reinforce this belief.

In India, the government-owned BSNL and MTNL are major buyers of telecom equipment. BSNL has floated a single tender of procuring 45m lines on GSM technology. This tender will be worth about $4bn.

BSNL has put a condition that the bidder should have either a manufacturing base in India, or it should tie up with a company having manufacturing facility in India.

Huawei wants to set up a manufacturing facility in India so that it can bid on its own in this and future tenders. The company already has a research and development centre in Bangalore. Set up in '99, the centre was the first set-up in India by a Chinese technology company.

India is the fastest growing telecom market in the world and Huawei wants to be an important equipment supplier here. However, it is yet to get any major contract. In India, its accumulated turnover for the last three years has been $300m.

Globally, it had a turnover of $8.2bn, and a net profit of $700m last year. Huawei's international revenues surpassed domestic revenues. About 58% of its revenues come from international markets, the rest from domestic market. Huawei expects 30% increase in revenues from international markets.

Huawei invests more than 10% of its revenues in R&D. It has filed 11,000 applications for patent and has already received more than 3,000 patents. It is very strong in GSM. "By March end, we would have established GSM networks of 140m," said a Huawei spokesperson.