The Hindu Business Line : Agilent to ramp up Indian operations

AGILENT Technologies Inc, the $6.1-billion diversified technology solutions provider, plans to ramp up Indian operations which will see the company doubling its headcount in about 18 months to 2,500 and expanding the scope of R&D work. The company is evaluating various options, including the South, for supplemental growth.

Speaking to Business Line, Ms Anita Manwani, Vice-President and General Manager, Global Sourcing, said that Agilent's R&D capabilities from India have doubled over the past nine months.

"We are excited about our growth so far and confident that over the next year, our team in India will make significant contributions as well as contributions to Agilent's IP capital. Agilent is evaluating options for supplemental growth."

Agilent provides R&D for ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) development, development and release of advanced design systems for RF (radio frequency) and mixed signal environments and device drivers and user interface development for RF and electronics instruments.

Ms Manwani said, "Since inception in November 1999, Agilent's Indian presence has grown significantly and today it is considered an important part of the company's Asia-Pacific strategy. The Asia-Pacific is the largest market for us, contributing 41 per cent of global revenue and employing about 30 per cent of global headcount.

"India's contribution to Agilent's global revenue is scaling upwards and moving with the customer base. We are gradually but surely increasing our presence in India."

In terms of manpower strength, the company has more than 1,000 professionals today and expects to double it over the next 18 months.

Agilent recently established a system-on-chip (SOC) design centre in Gurgaon, its first integrated chip design centre in India that provides ASIC and system design services to customers of its ASIC Products Division, part of the Semiconductor Products Group.

The SOC design centre covers design, logic and physical design, verification and system firmware design for industries such as networking, computing, imaging and storage applications.

The centre complements existing ASIC design centres in the US, Malaysia and Singapore.

"Agilent handles software development for communications and some test and measurement product lines and expects to expand its R&D contributions from India in wireless and other solution offerings," she said.

"Specifically, R&D work is expected to be in the areas of wireless solutions systems and billing software for telecom service providers and device drivers for electronic products. These are some of the activities we are looking at for expanding our R&D base in India."

As a corporation, Agilent is helping accelerate technological progress in aerospace and Defence globally and in India.

Therefore, as a technology innovator and enabler, Agilent is investing more in new products and technology.

"Development of key modules for electronics instruments, which are used in aerospace research, is one of the areas that Agilent anticipates providing from our operations in India."

Agilent's existing centre in Gurgaon employs over 1,200 professionals working on back-end financial processing, intranet development, engineering support, IT support and R&D.

The company's separate aerospace and Defence applications division handles test and measurements applications.

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