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Oracle in India push, taps software talent

US software giant Oracle Corp plans to invest $50 million in India within 12-18 months to take advantage of the country's expanding pool of cost-effective software developers.

"There's no downturn here. Oracle is instead looking at shifting more work to India," Ranjan Chak, executive director at Oracle's India development centre, said in an interview.

The bulk of the money will go towards boosting Oracle's Indian product development centre, which designs and develops software for many of Oracle's high-profile web products.

The investment will also cover Oracle's sales and marketing, customer support and consulting units in India, Chak said.

Oracle is the world's second-largest software maker.

Oracle aims to double staff to 1,200 at its seven-year-old product development group, located in Bangalore, India's technology capital and Hyderabad, an emerging technology centre.

Oracle joins a growing number of global tech giants including IBM and Sun Microsystems which are ramping up investments in India, attracted by the local software sector's pool of high quality and cost-effective software engineers.

Chak said Oracle plans to expand staff in its global support centre to 450 from about 170 and double the staff in its consulting unit to 400 within 12-18 months.

Oracle has invested about $100 million in its Indian operations in the past seven to eight years.

The India Development Centre is Oracle's biggest unit in terms of staff and the kind of projects it handles, Chak said.

"We are going to increase the breadth and depth of the work done in India," Chak said.

Oracle's Indian unit works on a number of Internet products including database technologies and Web technologies and has assisted in developing Oracle's 8i appliance and Oracle Portal.

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