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Contrary to a recent report by a research agency about Indias decreasing
attractiveness for newer companies for setting up their R&D operations in the
country, the Indian growth story continues and there is no doubt about Indias
prowess as the biggest R&D hub outside the US. If the recent investment
announcements by VMware, a virtualization leader, or Yahoo! (which recently
announced the expansion of its India R&D operations with the launch of Yahoo!
Labs) are anything to go by, the momentum is picking up.
VMware has pledged an investment of $100 mn over the next two years to work
on entire portfolios of solutions for datacenter and desktop virtualization.
Before that, Cisco expanded its R&D operations as part of the setting up of
Ciscos globalization center. John Chambers has also annouced that about 50% of
Ciscos core R&D work will be done from India which is significant.
The India Advantage
The most important reason for this overwhelming success has been the
availability of talent pool in the country. According to Ajay Gupta, director,
HP Labs India, We have seen an increase in the availability of talent,
particularly the postgraduate talent that we have needed in the last two years.
Also, the ratio of attrition and churn is within comfortable limits.
A large number of companiesranging from big multinationals like HP and IBM
to vertical specific R&D centers, to home bred IT services companies like
Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, or TCShave been behind the success of India as an R&D
powerhouse. From the coming of Texas Instruments in the 1980s to Philips to new
technology vendors like VMware, India has come a long way and boasts of more
than hundred companies that are doing cutting edge product development, but
there is one catch here. The R (research) continues to remain a secondary
priority for most companiesaccording to some reports, only about 5% is research
and 95% is development. Almost all leading companies are present in India except
for a handful that includes companies like Apple, which is an exception.
Unlike China, where protection of IP has been a challenge for most companies,
the situation in India is different and favorable. Most companies, including IT
services firms like Infosys, have started filing more patents than ever before.
Most companies Dataquest talked to were unanimous that they were in India not
for cost arbitrage but for talent availability.
According to Aravind Sitaraman, VP and MD, Cisco Development Organization,
It is not the cost of operation that is going to attract investments in a place
like India; it is, rather, about talent, innovation, and growth.
|
Company
|
Start Up Year |
Primary Focus Areas |
Key Innovations |
|
Bell Labs Research India
(Alcatel-Lucent) |
2004 |
Conducts
fundamental and applied research in scientific fields related to computing
and communications software. The lab also partners closely with
Alcatel-Lucents customers as they deploy new technologies (cellular data,
low-cost networking, etc) |
India team
contributed to OmniAccess 3500 Nonstop Laptop Guardiana laptop security
solution |
Cisco R&D (4,400)
(Also has joint development initiatives with Satyam, Infosys, Wipro, HCL,
and Zensar) |
1995 |
Product
development across all Cisco product portfolio |
NA |
|
Cadence Design Systems (600) |
1987 |
Runs centers
of excellence across multiple EDA technologies |
Verification
and PCB design, Incisive Formal Verifier |
|
Google R&D (200) |
2004 |
Localization
of applications |
Google Local
Search and Google Local Business Center, Indic On-Screen Keyboard, iGoogle
Gadget, Google Indic Transliteration (this is part of the initiative to
localize offerings) |
|
HP Labs |
2002 |
Principal
focus on creating new technologies for addressing the IT needs of the next
billion customers for HP |
Gesture-based
keyboard, TV PrintCast, Educenter |
|
IBM Software Labs (3400) |
1992 |
Create
products and collaborative innovation on real-world client issues |
SOA-based
banking application; solutions in supply chains and store integration
solutions; designed and implemented the first-ever SOA and
Web-services-based self-care customer solution in the Asia-Pacific region
for Bharti |
|
IBM Research Lab (3200) |
1998 |
Information
management, user interaction technologies, speech technologies, e-commerce,
life sciences, distributed computing, and software engineering |
Contributed to
Blue Gene, speech recognition services and innovations |
a) Intel India Development
Center (2,500)
b) Intel India Research Center (includes Bangalore Design Lab and Systems
Research Center) |
1999 |
a) Focus on
Intels core areas: application software and solutions; chip sets;
communication software; compilers design and manufacturing automation;
digital signal processing; graphic drivers; microprocessor; networking
products; stack optimization
b) Silicon prototyping and Systems research |
a) Design of
the next generation of 32-bit server and Intel mobility technologies
b) Worked on tera-scale research prototype
silicon, Polaris, the worlds first programmable TeraFLOP processor |
|
Texas Instruments |
1985 |
Involved in
developing state-of-the-art solutions for applications like wireless
handsets, wireless infrastructure (base stations), video (security and
surveillance, IP phones, set-top boxes), high performance analog |
LoCosto, the
industrys first single chip solution for wireless handsets, first floating
point digital signal controller, F2833x |
|
MindTree |
1998 |
Provides R&D
services to a wide range of industries. The company uses its MindTree
Incubated New Technologies (MINTs) for the purpose |
NA |
|
MIDC |
1998 |
Integrated
with the key product families of Microsoft (covers all aspects of software
developmentdevelopment, testing, and program management). Also has a
mobility center of excellence |
BizTalk RFID
2006 R2, end-to-end ownership of twenty-five critical components of Windows
Vista, end-to-end responsibility in developing Virtual PC 2007 |
|
Microsoft Research (1,300) |
2005 |
Algorithms
research group Cryptography; security and applied mathematics; digital
geographics; mobility networks and systems; multilingual systems; and
rigorous software engineering technology for emerging markets |
SixthSense
project, a radio-frequency identification (RFID) system; a user interface
for the illiterate by using icons instead of letters |
|
SETLabs (Infosys) |
1999 |
Primarily
engaged in developing solutions with an eye on the existing IT services
customers |
Infosys
Elixir, a middleware for wireless sensor networks m-connect context aware
mobile transaction platform that enables extension of any Web application
that can be accessed from any Web-enabled mobile device; Tru Syn for
building mobile synchronization based mobile solutions |
|
Tata Research Development and
Design Center (TCS) |
1981 |
Works on
developing new technologies, models, tools, and products to serve TCS
clients |
Developing
version 2.0 of Masketeer, a data-masking tool, to enhance the privacy of
individual data while permitting its use in controlled applications. It is
collaborating with Stanford University |
|
VMware (500) |
2004 |
Will work on
the entire portfolio of solutions for datacenter and desktop virtualization |
NA |
|
SAP |
1998 |
Contributes to
all areas of the SAP product value chain; 20% SAP product development
happens from here |
NA |
|
Wipro |
|
Provides a
range of R&D servicesfrom product strategy to hardware design to consulting |
Digital
set-top box with 2 Mb of flash memory and 16 Mb of SDRAM for a particular
customer |
|
Oracle |
|
Product
design, development, technology and feature enhancements; quality
engineering; documentation; curriculum for instructor-led and online
training, integration, as well as support and maintenance of existing
products |
Contributed to
Oracle Database 10g; Oracle Application Server 10g; Oracle Collaboration
Suite; Oracle EBusiness Suite |
|
CA (1200) |
1997 |
Product
development across CAs products |
NA |
|
Tesco (1200) |
2004 |
Designs,
develops, tests, and manages some of Tescos mission-critical IT
applications |
Paperless
picking system, continuous replenishment |
|
STMicro (1700) |
1987 |
Specializes in
VLSI design, embedded software development, application engineering, and
company information systems |
Launched
Made-in-India chip, STi5107, the most recent addition to STs
industry-leading family of STB decoders, entirely designed in India,
contributed NomadikT chip family of application processors |
|
AMD |
2007 |
Chip design |
Design and
optimization of its 45nm quad core Shanghai chip |
|
NXP Semiconductor (846) |
2006 |
Global centers
of competence in GSM stack and application framework and RF and chip design
for 2 and 2.5G |
e-passport,
mobile transactions through near field communication technology |
|
Yahoo! R&D |
|
Center of
excellence for next generation search and advertising technologies, focused
on making the Web more relevant and simple for users and advertisers |
NA |
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