HCL to ramp up aerospace operations

HCL Technologies' aerospace division will hire more than 100 software engineers over the next 12 months for upcoming projects that will be outsourced from aviation majors.

The company already has a 700-strong team for the aerospace business. While 200 are floating mainframe specialists, another 300 will be redeployed for the projects.

India currently accounts for 5-10 per cent of the $3 billion market for avionics outsourcing. According to a company executive, HCL's aerospace product engineering team commands 30-50 per cent of the market at present.

The market in India is expected to grow to 10-15 per cent over the next few years, said executives.

The aerospace division of the company has leading airframe manufacturers, system integrators and Tier 1 suppliers as some of its clients.

Embedded software, hardware design, engineering services, tests solutions and applications management are some of the services offered by HCL Technologies.

The aerospace team at HCL has over 18 clients. While there are immediately no major competitors for HCL, larger companies like Infosys are coming into the fray, say company executives.

"We would like the smaller players to have a share of the pie as we would get a steady stream of trained personnel," said an executive.

HCL has to compete with smaller and local IT companies in Europe, he added. The company also has plans for acquisitions abroad, he said.

The cost of developing a plane can range from $6-12 billion and it takes 4-8 years.