Huawei plans $2 billion R&D investments in India
25 Jun 2012
Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei is planning to invest about $2 billion in India over the next four years in an effort to boost R&D and penetrate global markets.
The Chinese company is also looking at the roll-out of 4G services in India and is targeting more than 50 per cent share of the contracts.
Huawei reported $1.5 billion in revenues from India in 2011-12.
"2011 was a good year for Huawei because our revenue in India increased about 20 per cent... Last year, we began building a new R&D centre in Bangalore, which will house more than 5,000 people. From 2011, the plan is to invest $2 billion in five years in India," Huawei India chief executive officer Cai Liqun said.
This, he added, includes the R&D center as also manufacturing and marketing facilities among others.
The company is in the process of setting up a research and development centre in Bangalore, which would house more than 5,000 professionals. The facility is expected to cost $150 million and will be operational from June 2013.
Huawei operates a global service resource centre (GSRC) in Bangalore, which caters to its clients across 140 countries. This, along with a global network operations centre (GNOC), is also Huawei's largest such centre outside of China.
"We are also planning to set up a global technology centre along with the others in Bangalore, maybe this year or the next. This centre will focus on providing technical support to clients globally," Liqun said.
He added that GTEC will handle technical issues of customers globally but declined to comment on the number of people that would be hired.
"Indians have language advantage as well as technology, that is what we want to capitalise on through this centre," Liqun said.
Of the company's $1.5 billion Indian revenues, network business driven by 3G deployment and network expansion by operators contributed $1.2 billion while the remaining $300 million came from devices like handsets, dongles and set top boxes.
Liqun, however, expects 2012 to be a tough year for the telecom industry in India because of policy uncertainty.