Where's cutting-edge R&D of MNCs? It's in India
  |    23 Comments
Printer Print Email Email
Where's cutting-edge R&D of MNCs? It's in India
Bangalore: After returning India in 2009, Sudhir Dixit was clearly asked by Hewlett-Packard Labs to innovate for the next billion customers, and mainly focus on how to meet the needs of non-tech savvy users like shopkeepers. The biggest challenge was in front of him that how would he help shopkeepers in using the computer just by touching its screen, speaking to it and gazing at it or waving their hand. "The idea is to make it as natural as talking on the phone or watching TV," said Dixit. In the last few years, all the companies have upgraded their businesses in India. Companies such as Google, Microsoft, GE Healthcare and Siemens have begun to use India to design and develop products. Understanding the demand, GE developed an electro-cardiogram (ECG) in India that costs a third of conventional ECG machines. Microsoft, which started its R&D centre in India five years ago, with just 20 people, employs 1,500 people today. For SAP, India is the largest R&D centre outside Germany and employs 4,200 people. Half of the global development of its customer relationship management software such as CRM 7.0 was done in India. For search giant Google, Bangalore was first R&D centre outside U.S. The biggest competitor of Google, Yahoo does 25 percent of its all development work in India. Aravind Sitraman, Managing Director of Cisco Development Organization said that things began as a cost-arbitrage but today an entire line of products is owned out of India. Over the years, Cisco's centre in India evolved from a loanership to ownership, partnership and a new leadership model. Today, it looks at Bangalore, its eastern headquarters, as a zone for developing new technologies and products to drive growth in newer markets. Following the success of IT companies, other multinationals are also fastly catching up, reported Ranju Sarkar and P B Jayakumar of Business Standard.

siliconindia