Spreading their Reach Date:   Friday , June 01, 2007 60,000 IT workers return home from Silicon Valley The Indus Entrepreneur Group (TiE) estimates that around 60,000 IT workers may have returned from Silicon Valley to India in recent years. According to TiE, the Silicon Valley has been the most affected by this trend. In 2003, TiE had reported that between 15,000 and 20,000 Indians had returned. The trend has continued and about 40,000 more have come back in the last four years. ”The flow of investment capital to India also has expanded, much of it from Silicon Valley VC firms,” says Mishra, Senior Venture Partner with Clearstone Ventures, enunciating a major reason for the shift. Aperto and NXP move to new facilities Aperto Networks and NXP Semiconductors are both moving towards upgrading their India centers, both in the R&D and sales and marketing space. To better address the demands of the market, the sales force of NXP Semiconductor, an independent semiconductor company founded by Philips has moved from Mumbai to Bangalore. The center will now be used as a site for global product and technology development, and plans to increase its headcount to 900 by the end of 2007. Aperto Networks—builder of WiMAX base stations and subscriber units for fixed, portable, and mobile applications, on the other hand, adhering to projections and prospective demands in the WiMax space, announced that it is relocating its India center to Bangalore. The R&D headcount of Aperto India is approximately 50 now; and the company is looking to ramp up to 70 by year-end and 100 by next year. IIT Kanpur is developing robot for India’s moon mission. When India sends its proposed moon mission in 2011, it will have as part of the touring party, a unique robot developed by the student-engineers and their professors at IIT, Kanpur. The ‘SmartNav’, a two-legged robot, fitted with sophisticated sensors and high-resolution cameras being developed for the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) would help space scientists navigate the moon’s surface during the Chandrayan-II Moon Mission in 2011. The device would cost around two million rupees and provide real-time data and pictures of the moon’s surface. “It can also detect the distance of a hindrance, enter a small crater, bring surface samples and return high resolution images to the lunar vehicle,” says Susmit Sen, Head-Centre for Robotics at IIT-Kanpur. India chosen for launch of first global IT qualification India has been chosen for the launch of the world’s first qualification for financial services IT staff working in operations. The IT in Investment Operations Award (ITIO), which has been developed by the Securities & Investment Institute (SII) is in response to industry requests for a practical and relevant qualification for IT practitioners working in the financial services sector. Nearly half of the ITIO examination is devoted to the role of IT in the advisory, middle and operations divisions, with a further 25 per cent devoted to IT management and delivery issues. Sun Micro, Tech Mahindra join hands for IPTV services Leading IT firm Sun Microsystems India and telecom software major Tech Mahindra announced a strategic alliance to roll out cost-effective and efficient Internet protocol television (IPTV) services in the Indian and Asia Pacific markets. As a part of this alliance, Sun and Tech Mahindra, along with AMD, will jointly set up a next generation IPTV lab at the Tech Mahindra facility in Pune. Tech Mahindra’s IPTV lab would feature solutions from an exclusive consortium of solution partners including Digisoft, Envivio, Harmonic, I-Make, Verimatrix and Mototech, and Sun’s own Streaming System.