Huawei Technologies Co. has slashed its current-year sales target for India by half and is cutting its headcount in the country by over 50 percent, several persons with knowledge of the matter disclosed Monday in the midst of calls for a boycott of Chinese products.

However, the Chinese tech giant's India unit divulged that the report which indicated the country's retrenchment affecting more than half of Huawei's workforce is without any basis, although the company did not elaborate.

Based on reports, Huawei -- which reported around $1.2 billion in total sales in 2017 -- is targeting $350-$500 million in sales for this year, compared to approximately $700-$800 million it was anticipating earlier in Asia's third-biggest economy.

The move comes as Huawei struggles with plummeting demand for its services and hardware in the wake of border disputes between India and China. India has joined the United States and Britain in flagging security worries over the tech group's connections with the Chinese government.

India has already restricted government-controlled entities from sourcing technology equipment from Chinese firms ZTE and Huawei and is said to have informally influenced private telecoms firms to get rid of Chinese hardware over time, without affecting client services.

Excluding staff in research and development as well as its Global Service Center, Huawei is reportedly rendering jobless around 60 to 70 percent of its Indian headcount. The company's India division employs around 700 workers directly, based on estimates, on top of the hundreds through third-party groups, sources said.

The update in forecast arises from the company -- which has telecom giants Nokia, Ericsson, ZTE, and Samsung as main rivals -- not anticipating any new sources of income from its only two major telecom patrons in India: Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel. Huawei is now thus letting go of "on-rolls, contract and third-party staff in India," sources disclosed, as reported by Danish Khan of ETTelecom.

According to a recent ETT report, the Chinese conglomerate is on the brink of losing its money-making ventures from Bharti Airtel in the Rest of Tamil Nadu (RoTN) circle to Ericsson, having been sidetracked from the Rajasthan circle late in 2019.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has been urging members of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing group -- which also includes the UK, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia -- to shun Huawei's equipment. Huawei has been banned by Australia from rolling out its 5G network for the country's tech infrastructure. The British government has likewise barred the country's mobile providers from acquiring new Huawei 5G gear after the end of 2020.