STMicroelectronics to invest $30 mn in India

STMicroelectronics, the world's largest supplier of silicon chips for set-top boxes (STBs), plans to invest an additional $30 million on Indian operations.

The $8.8-billion company is also planning to increase headcount by adding 300 engineers to its existing 1,500 employees in the country.

Confirming this, STMicroelectronics India spokeswoman Gunjan Banerjee said, "This would be used for its ongoing R&D projects, building a training and recruitment centre in Delhi and setting up an additional lab in Pune."

"By now, it has invested $100 million in the country," she added. STMicroelectronics Indian centre is its largest design centre outside Europe.

The Indian design centre, based out of Greater Noida, concentrates on chip-designing applications for STBs, camera phones and smart cards.

A part of the investment would also be used for setting up R&D facility in Pune. The facility will cater to the company's expected increase in business.

It is also planning to hire another 300 engineers, who would be working on design for semiconductor chips.

The additional employees would be recruited for all its centres across the country, with around 5 per cent earmarked for Bangalore and considerable number for the upcoming Pune facility.

ST India specialises in embedded software development, application engineering and computer software. The company's designers had developed embedded solutions for a wide variety of applications, including bluetooth, wireless LAN, digitial subscriber line (DSL), STB and digitial video disks (DVD).