Tuesday, July 22, 2003
HP to ramp up India headcount
RAHUL SACHITANAND
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
BANGALORE: IT services giant Hewlett Packard is looking to build on its presence in India. The company's 4,000 plus developers across India (including Digital GlobalSoft) are responsible for over 20% of the firm's software development activities. Now, HP is looking to step up its presence in India.
Ms Siaou-Sze Lien, senior vice president, HP Services Asia Pacific, told ET that there are a lot of growth opportunities in India and the country has significant offshore advantages. "We see India emerging as a hub for both call centre and software development activity," she stated. HP is already said to be in the process of ramping up work allocated to its Indian operations in these areas.
HP services focuses on a variety of development programmes in India. In addition, HP Labs also works in India on a range of cutting edge technologies related to next generation computing as well as expanding HP's portfolio of offerings. The company runs a Developer and Solution Partner Program (DSPP), which is designed to help independent software vendors (ISVs), developers and system integrators (SIs) create solutions based on HP 's platforms. India also hosts the second advanced technology centre globally in Bangalore.
Meanwhile, HP is seeing traction for its products and services in the country. According to Ms Lien, this growth was being driven by the financial services sector. She claimed that banks and other financial institutions were implementing next generation core banking solutions. The dormant manufacturing space was also beginning to show some signs of growth and increased IT spending. She contended that while the telecom sector had seen a slowdown in the last couple of years, companies in this area continued to spend heavily on IT.
HP has identified India along with China and Korea as its fastest growing markets. Rather than spend heavily on new services and products, customers were today looking to integrate their existing assets to derive maximum benefits, Ms Lien said.
HP services, across Asia is an 8,000 employee business unit of HP. This unit works in several areas such as customer support, managed services, and education-related initiatives. The Indian arm of HP services is said to have over 700 employees.
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