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Intel to continue investing in India big way

Fakir Chand in Bangalore

Intel Corporation, the world's largest chipmaker and a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communication products, will continue to invest in India as before to expand its presence and operations in the sub-continent.

Disclosing this here on Friday at a crowded media briefing, Intel president and CEO Craig Barrett said the Indian subsidiary of the global company would be investing in the following three strategic areas:

1. In product development, including engineering in hardware and software segments;
2. In the IT infrastructure support; and
3. Venture capital activities for strategic stakes in Indian IT companies associated with Internet technology. Intel has so far invested in 30 such companies.

Declining to specify the investment amounts budgeted for India expansion plans, Barrett said the company would be doubling the workforce rapidly from the current 500-600 engineers in the coming months.

"We don't disclose country-wise investments as a company policy, but you can work out how much it would mean if we are to recruit about that much number (reading 500-600 professionals)," Barrett told rediff.com in clarification.

As part of Intel's social commitment the world over, the Indian operations will be training tens of thousands of teachers in association with the local governments in e-learning, besides imparting the basics of IT education.

Commenting on the impact of tech meltdown on the Indian IT industry, Barrett said the slowdown in the US economy was forcing US companies to look towards India for greater outsourcing to cut their cost of operations.

"Cost-cutting approach by US companies, including technology giants will be an advantage to India in terms of growth opportunities, while the pace of slow down spreading to Europe and Japan impacting India remains as serious."

Asked what were the lasting lessons learnt by the IT industry from the tech meltdown in the wake of the global recession, spearheaded by the US slow down, Barrett said there were a couple of lessons to be heeded to.

"One of them is that technology never stays still. There can be no recession in technology unlike in the case of economic recessions, which are cyclical in nature, because technology continues to move ahead with greater speed.

The other lesson is a carry over of the dot-com phenomenon, which indicates that basic fundamental business model matters more than stock valuations and eyeballs. Products, revenues, and customers fundamentally make companies and not the hype generated by the Wall Street.

There should be real business models to over come the crisis that plagued the dot-com companies in the recent past," Barrett said.

At the end of a hectic day, which began with a breakfast meeting with Karnataka's IT-savvy chief minister S M Krishna, Barrett said he was excited by the kind of activities that were taking place in the Bangalore IT industry.

"I find a lot of scope for this hitech capital of India to surge ahead in the global IT market, especially in the software development area, be it at Infosys, Sasken Technologies, or Wipro," Barrett added.

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