NEW DELHI: Communications & IT minister, Dayanidhi Maran on Friday unveiled the first 'Made in India' chip launched by STMicroelectronics NV, Europe's largest chipmaker, signalling the development as a move towards the country becoming a strong hub for electronics and semiconductor manufacturing firms.

Speaking to reporters in New Delhi at the event, the company, which has had a base in India since 1992, said it would invest up to $30 million in India and add 1,300 employees to almost double its work force to 3,000 over the next three years.

Thierry Tingaud, STMicroelectronics' corporate vice president for emerging markets, said investments would be mainly in constructions of design and development centres.

However, although the chip will be sold across the world, the company ruled out setting up a chip manufacturing facility in India in the next five years time.

"It is not on the agenda to start a new plant... Of course, we look at the possibilities (for manufacturing) in every country, but for the next five years there is no plan to have a plant in India," the company's COO, Alain Duthell said.

The Geneva-based company has three design and development centres in Noida - the company's largest design facility outside Europe - that design integrated circuits and develop software solutions for the company.

As per Maran, the Indian semiconductor industry is poised to increase to $15 billion by 2015

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India_Business/
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`It is the demolisher of imbalances and a leveller'

KOLKATA: President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam on Wednesday asked the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) to take up the challenge to provide free bandwidth on demand, saying that while trying to be inclusive, providing this in an unhindered way to the rural areas would be a priority task.

"It is the demolisher of imbalances and a great leveller in a knowledge society," he said after inaugurating InfoComm 2006 organised by Business World and Nasscom.

He said free bandwidth would make economic sense if one prices the services offered using bandwidth. "We have the fibre infrastructure ready up to the block level, last mile technologies are being implemented and the VSAT technologies for the unreachable are in place in the form of EDUSAT and other satellite services."

On the software exports front, the President felt that stagnation had set in since the ICT industry's growth in the mid-Nineties. He wanted the industry to change the situation and target a software export level of $200 billion by 2010 "It will need adoption of multiple innovative strategies by the Nasscom and the industry partners," he said.

Major activities in the domestic area too needed to be completed by the software industry, according to President Kalam. This included establishment of a State-wide area network by 2007 and computerisation of nearly 13,500 district and subordinate courts.

Noting that West Bengal, which was not even on the industry's radar screen, has now woken up to the ICT world, Mr. Kalam said it should become the gateway to the East in ICT and bring niche capability to the market. He said India should now invest around $300 million towards nano science and technology research in order to become a leader in nano technology products which have a market potential of an equivalent amount.

Nasscom Chairman, Ramalinga Raju, also spoke of an inclusive growth strategy. He ruled out the possibility of Indian running out of IT talent, saying that only 15 per cent of the total talent-base was now being used and international events such as these strengthened the industry's foundation for making greater use of talent.

http://www.hindu.com/2006/12/07/stories/2006120705101800.htm

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ MONDAY, DECEMBER 04, 2006 01:38:10 AM]
MUMBAI/ NEW DELHI: Following the global merger of French equipment giant Alcatel and USA's Lucent on December 1, the two companies have begun integrating their India and South Asia units and operations. All employees of Lucent in India have been absorbed in Alactel-Lucent. The merged entity has over 4,500 employees across manufacturing, R&D and sales and marketing in India.

"The integration process has already started and we hope to complete it quickly as there is hardly any overlap between the operations and services provided by both companies in India," Ravi Sharma, who has been appointed as Alcatel-Lucent president for South Asia, told ET. Prior to this appointment, Ravi Sharma was president of Alcatel's activities in South Asia.

The Alcatel-Lucent combine has also chalked out plans to ramp up their India operations. According to Mr Sharma, Alcatel-Lucent together would be the most comprehensive network equipment provider in telecom, broadband, submarine cables, IPTV, manufacturing and also the research and development space in India.

Besides, the combine will also have the most exhaustive product portfolio: "Till now, we were offering only GSM and Lucent was providing CDMA equipment. We can now provide the whole product range to players like MTNL, BSNL and Reliance Communications, which use both the technologies," Mr Sharma said.

Alcatel and Lucent earlier had five entities in India, including Alcatel South Asia, Alcatel Development India, Lucent Technologies India and Lucent Technologies Hindustan. "These are being restructured," said Mr Sharma.

He also added that Alcatel-Lucent will focus on four key areas - wireless, broadband, enterprise and submarine cable segments in the country. Alacatel's strength had been in the areas of GSM infrastructure, equipment for transmission and broadband, development and implementation, while Lucent, on the other hand, specialised in CDMA technology, including optical, data and wireless networking and telephone switching.

Additionally, most Indian operators today have submarine cables. "The opportunity there is huge because going forward, more capacity will be needed. Alcatel-Lucent is geared to meet that demand. We will bid for the BSNL and MTNL's proposed joint undersea cables to West Asia and Singapore," Mr Sharam said.

Mr Sharma said the merger will not impact the earlier agreements entered into by either of the two firms. "Our agreement with Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) for providing cellular equipment to BSNL and the partnership with C-DoT for the WiMax R&D facility will stay unchanged," he added.

Alcatel-Lucent has manufacturing facilities in Bangalore and Gurgaon and R&D centres in Noida, Gurgaon, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The merger will also see Alcatel's international service centre in Mumbai being renamed as Alcatel-Lucent learning centre, and its capacity expanded to 200 engineers from 60 currently.

The joint entity also training centres in Gurgaon and Mumbai. However, the company does not plan to start any new manufacturing facility. "For the time being, we will continue to focus on ITI," said Mr Sharma.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/702831.cms

BANGALORE: India looks to be close to John Chambers' heart and key to Cisco's larger global strategy. Why else would the chairman & CEO of the network equipment major visit the country so regularly!

He will be here on December 6 and 7 - his third official visit to India - and this visit comes just about a year after his last one. On the eve of his visit, Chambers shared his views with TOI on how India will play a vital role in Cisco's global growth and his passion for the network.

Is India a high-growth geography for Cisco and how key is the market to you?

Well, India is a very important market for us. It is not only a strong market for our products and services, but it's also a key centre for our global innovation. We are investing heavily in building Cisco's largest R&D centre here. Therefore, the country is a significant part of Cisco's global growth strategy.

Even from a sales perspective, India is a great success story in the entire Asia Pacific region. Some of our key deals in the last two years have come from India. Our focus on innovation and partnership is having an impact across several customer segments. We expect this trend to continue and networking spends to increase over the next three to five years. Although we do not share country specific numbers, year-on-year, the country is growing over 70%.

Where do you see Cisco in the next five years?

I cannot answer this question without touching the network. Network will play a critical role in enabling the next generation of productivity and Cisco will continue to focus on integration and adding more intelligence into network. It will see new technology advancements including architectural approach to security.

How to integrate intelligence into network sets the foundation for firms to move with speed and flexibility for competitive advantage. We have predicted that the network would have three major growth phases. An intelligent movement of data, voice and video across a series of networks, virtualisation of services and resources, and application-aware networks. If you think of application-aware networks as the logical evolution of where we're going to go, the data centre is clearly where we see a lot of opportunity. The final area will be the movement to the network as a platform where everything is connected to the network. The network is moving from a mere transport system to a platform that can run applications. This convergence trend is bringing data, voice and video, together on the IP network.

Cisco has made some investments in India in the last couple of years in firms like Indiagames and Bharti Telesoft. Are more such investments planned?

We have been very active in India as an independent investor, and also working with Softbank Asia Infrastructure Fund, our investment partner in Asia. We will continue to be aggressive in direct investments like the deals we did with Indiagames and Bharti Telesoft, and investing in the country as a whole. To date, we have invested both directly and indirectly in eight companies in India and the results have been very positive. In 2005, the total revenues from these firms were over $300 million. Today these firms employ over 6,000 people.

Cisco is targeting a big scale-up in India. Would it also include in-organic growth?

We have a strong philosophy around our acquisition strategy. We never acquire big to big, we only acquire big to small. We do not acquire companies, but best of breed technology and the people, since talent is your greatest asset. We have been very successful with our acquisition strategy over the years, with 112 such deals globally. We will continue to be aggressive in our acquisition and investment strategy. What we are looking for is companies with similar vision and culture, as you know proximity is never an issue.

What progress has Cisco Capital made in bringing end-user and channel financing programmes to India?

Cisco Capital has committed $50 million of equity capital to Cisco Capital India and is experiencing rapid growth and has completed leasing transactions with 28 customers including manufacturing, service provider and government segments. We provide leasing arrangements for network solutions. With our financing partners, Cisco Capital India has provided over $150 million in short-term financing to help channel partners preserve working capital and increase profitability.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India_Business/
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