StorageTek sets up India arm

To invest $10m for units in Bangalore, Pune

StorageTek, a US-based $2 billion storage solutions provider, has set up its wholly-owned subsidiary in India "" StorageTek India. The company plans to invest $10 million in India over the next three years to develop software units in Bangalore and Pune.

Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, Andy Srinivasan, regional director-Asia South Pacific of StorageTek, said the Indian arm will be headquartered in Bangalore with a regional presence in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad.

StorageTek commenced its India operations with a representative office three years ago, employing four persons. After witnessing year-on-year growth of over 40 per cent, and after employing skilled labour, it has decided to scale up its operations with a full-fledged subsidiary in India.

The subsidiary will initially employ 20 handling sales, post sales, technical systems engineering and global support operations and hopes to have 80 people by year-end.

The Pune unit of the company is already functional and the Bangalore unit is expected to commence operations in another 45 days.

StorageTek acquired the Boston-based Storability a few months ago for $10 million. "Storability is strong in software IP and had a software development centre in Pune. Through this unit, the company commenced its India operations," said Srinivasan.

"We plan to establish a professsional services arm in India, initially for Level II support for our partners in India and gradually take on the company's global support (Level III, specialist support to engineers in Europe)," he added.

Vijay Pradhan, country manager, StorageTek India, said: "We currently have over 200 customer installations in India spread across the telecom, banking, government and IT software and services sectors."

"In 2005, we plan to offer professional services in information lifecycle management (ILM), storage architecture and storage consulting in India and aid international operations by offering Level 2 and Level 3 engineering support and programme management," said Pradhan.

The third party Indian disc and tape-based storage market is valued at $100 million and is growing at 20 per cent per annum. StorageTek claims to have a 35 per cent market share of it. The company plans to increase its revenue through the automated-tape library segment and also through the disk and networking product range.