US-based NCR Corp is setting up a Rs 600-cr manufacturing unit in Chennai

Apart from manufacturing ATMs, ATM components, it will also make self-checking kiosks for travel industry

NYSE-listed NCR Corporation, a global leader in consumer transactions technologies, is setting up a manufacturing facility in Chennai at a cost of around Rs 600 crore ($ 100 million). The new plant will be operational by March 2015,  company’s director of product management, Ashok Nallam, said.

NCR has a manufacturing unit in Puducherry with 700-odd employees. These employees would be gradually shifted to the Chennai unit after which the Puducherry facility would be closed, Rakesh Aulaya, NCR’s India and South Asia senior manager of public relations and marketing, told Business Standard.

He said the manufacturing facility was being shifted to Chennai as the company “wants to be closer to the market place”. Besides making automatic teller machines (ATMs) and ATM components, the new unit would manufacture self-checking kiosks for the travel industry.

In  2013, Nallam said, NCR’s turnover from India stood at Rs 1,500 crore. Globally, it clocked a turnover of $6.5 billion, 25 per cent of which was from Asia, West Asia and Africa.

He said NCR’s research and development (R&D) centre in Hyderabad had emerged as the largest software development centre of the company in the world in the past ten years. Started in 2004 with 50 employees, it now has over 600 people on its rolls.

According to Nallam, the centre’s engineering efforts have contributed to the development of major products in NCR’s financial services business portfolio. The centre plays a key role in collaborating with software development organisations in the US, UK and the Philippines to introduce next generation of innovative technologies.

In this context, Nallam pointed out that the centre had introduced various innovations adopted by global financial institutions like the interactive teller ATM, EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) contactless ATM cash withdrawals and mobile cash withdrawal amongst others. At present, over 400,000 ATMs around the world run applications developed by the Hyderabad R&D centre.