EMC to invest Rs 1100 cr by 2007

The US-based EMC Corporation, the leader in information storage and management, plans to invest Rs 1,100 crore in India by 2007.

The company had in 2003 announced an investment of $100 million over five years. Its second phase of investment up to $150 million was announced today. The company will also ramp up its headcount by 1000 from 400 by the end of 2005.

More than 50 per cent of the $100 million investment announced in 2003 has been invested in India, said a company executive.

The investment will go towards opening new offices, ramping up headcount, research and development of storage related EMC products, developing customer support in the Asia-Pacific region and enhancing partner network.

"With 60 per cent of IT spending coming from outside the US and only 42 per cent of EMC's total revenues for 2004 coming from international markets, we are focused on increasing our international business to represent half of our revenues over the next few years," William J Teuber Jr, executive vice president and chief financial officer said.

Teuber met IT and communications minister Dayanidhi Maran.

"In the last six months my ministry has followed a proactive policy of encouranging FDI in the technology scetor as a result of which a large number of MNCs are seriously looking at investing in India," Maran said.

The company sees India as a high growth market, he added. The Asia-Pacific region constitutes nearly 13 per cent of EMC's $8.23 billion revenues, said a company executive.

Currently, Dell and Datacraft are its partners, and its system integrators include Wipro, HCL Technologies, CMC and Tata Infotech. The company has over 32 resellers.

EMC India inaugurated its 165,000 square feet software development and support centre in Bangalore recently. It is the only storage vendor in India to have three solutions centres in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. The company began its India operations in 2000.

EMC has more than 100 large and mid-tier customers in India across vertical sectors such as telecom, manufacturing, technology and financial.