ATI ups India investment target to $75m

ATI Technologies Inc, the $2.2-billion major in design and manufacture of 3D graphics and digital media silicon solutions, has enhanced its investment target for India to $75 million. The company had earlier announced that it would be investing $50 million over a five-year period (till 2010) in India.

Addressing mediapersons here, Adrian Hartog, senior vice-president and general manager (consumer products division), ATI Technologies Inc, said, "We see our investments in India to be ahead of our earlier target of $50 million. We see it reaching the $75-million mark. Around $15 million has already been invested in India so far."

ATI Technologies has moved to a new 48,000-sq ft facility in Hyderabad, which will be able to accommodate more than 400 people. "We will be doubling our manpower strength to around 350 in the next 12 months," Hartog said. The company has a global headcount of 3,400 of which 50 per cent are engineers.

The company is also setting up a digital television (DTV) lab and an audio lab for testing at its Hyderabad centre.

"We are committed to India being an audio centre of excellence for us," Hartog said, adding that this assumes significance since audio was a core application for a lot of their clients. The Hyderabad centre is currently working on developing chipsets for cell phones, high-definition TVs and set-top boxes.

The company plans to ship 200 million chipsets this year, of which 100 million will be for handsets alone. Meanwhile, the Indian centre of ATI Technologies is also beginning to work with the R&D centres of Motorola in Hyderabad and Bangalore with regard to integration of its technology with Motorola's solutions. Motorola is a major client for ATI Technologies, contributing approximately 10 per cent to their total revenues.

ATI Technologies is eyeing revenues of around $2.6 billion in FY06 and $5 billion in the next couple of years.