BANGALORE: Huawei Technologies India, subsidiary of Huawei Technologies Hong
Kong, is planning to increase its staff strength by 1,500 engineers by 2005.
This year, by December 2002, the company expects to add 300 new engineers. It
currently employs about 550 engineers, out of which about 360 are Indians. All
new recruits would be from the domestic market, assured the company’s chief
operating officer, Lu Ke.
"India is certainly a cost center and offers us a great talent pool with
the required expertise. We are always on the look out for English speaking
software engineers. Hence we continuously invest in countries like Philipines
and Ireland, apart from India to get quality people in board. Canada and
Singapore are the two other regions where we will be making fresh investments in
terms of establishing technology centers," said Ke.
The company has well-established development centers in China and US apart
from its Indian off shore development facility. Huawei has 22,000 employees
globally, out of which 45 per cent are development engineers. "7,000 of the
development engineers are software development engineers, " said Ke.
The Indian operation is mulling expansion in terms of infrastructure to
accommodate the additional staff and will hence be taking up space in Bangalore.
The additional space is expected to be an expansion of its current facilities
either in Leela Palace or ITPL. Huawei had earmarked $ 30 million as investment
for Indian operations, this year. This will be made in infrastructure, equipment
and manpower, according to the COO.
In return the Indian operations is expected to make $ 32 million as revenue
as against the $ 12 million made last year. Further the Indian operations is
expected to churn out $ 100 million as revenue every year after 2005.
The company is currently focussing on five technology areas, Next generation
network, 3G solutions, Next generation services, networking solutions and
advanced telecom architecture. The Indian operation is ready with a product in
the next generation networking segment-SoftX 2000, expected for a May launch.