EMC riding the growth curve in India; to invest $100 mn

EMC, the $8 billion global player in the external storage market, is riding the growth curve in India as organisations increasingly realise that information is more important than technologies.

The corporation which is investing $100 million in India over five years (2003-07) to develop the market and also to scale up its development and support activities in India, has said that its India centre is working on a number of storage technologies, which might result in patents by the next year.

Said Manoj Chugh, president (India & Saarc), EMC: "The growth in the India market is exceptional. There has been increased acceptance of our products driven by the fact that external storage is no longer an esoteric subset of IT but perceived as key infrastructure, perhaps the most critical. Organisations have realised external storage is a specialist area and are looking for best of breed solutions, rather than bundled technology."

According to him, the EMC India software development and support centre will play an important role in EMC's international growth and will help get its storage management solutions to market faster and expand its worldwide reach.

"Presently we have 500 developers here in Bangalore and we intend to double this strength by end of this year," Chugh revealed.

Outlining market expansion plans, Chugh said that they have more than 150 customers in India and in the next one year will be doubling that number.

"We have three logistics and support centres as well as three proof of concept centres in India. As our customers grow, we want our support to be one step ahead of them," Chugh said.

According to IDC, EMC has close to 29 per cent market share in India in the external storage market space. EMC is banking on India to drive its future growth.

"In the fourth quarter of 2004, EMC received 43 per cent of revenues from international operations. In the next couple of years, we want to grow our international revenues to 50 per cent of our total revenues, and India is high on our agenda of this strategy," a spokesperson for EMC added.