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Alliance to invest $50 million
By siliconindia
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Friday, 16 July 2004, 19:30 IST
BANGALORE: The California-based Alliance Semiconductor plans to invest $50 million for expanding its India design centre over the next five years and double its India staff over the next three years.
The US-based company is a worldwide provider of analog and mixed signal products, high performance memory products, and systems solutions for the communications, computing, embedded, industrial and consumer markets.
The company has already spent about $20 million on its Indian operations, which consist of design centers in Bangalore and Hyderabad.
Alliance plans to increase its engineering staff at the two centers from 167 to 300 over the next three years in the Bangalore and Hyderabad centres. The India Design Center has grown from 20 to 150 engineers in the last five years.
The $50 million investment will allow the Indian centres to accelerate product development efforts and expand the technology talent in Bangalore and Hyderabad.
The company's Indian centers handle its design and development work and its US offices overlook sales and marketing.
Alliance's Bangalore center, which was founded in 1998 and had focused entirely on semiconductor design, will now also work on software development and production, Reddy said.
The company's Hyderabad center, which was started in 2002 with the acquisition of the Hyderabad offices of chipmaker PulseCore Inc., focuses on manufacturing application-specific integrated circuits.
The team at Alliance India has exceeded the goals set for the India center and has significantly contributed to the global growth of Alliance, said Damodar Reddy, Chairman, CEO and President, Alliance in a press release.
"Our design centers in India have done exceptionally well,we're now moving into full-fledged operations," he said.
The India center has grown from 20 to 167 engineers in the last five years, said Reddy.
The expansion is part of the company's turn-around strategy as well. The company reported a net loss of $ 19.4 million for the year ended March 31, 2004.
"With this new model, our mainstream (outsourcing) model should be good for another 20 to 30 years," said Reddy. "From getting design wins to production, we should become profitable within six to seven months."
Alliance also bought Chip Engines Inc. for $4.8 million in January 2003. Chip Engines designed semiconductor products for the networking, communications, cable and storage markets.
Alliance's main competitors include Cypress Semiconductor Corp., Integrated Device Technology Inc., Integrated Silicon Solutions Inc., PLX Technology, Samsung and Toshiba.