Tandberg opens R&D centre

Norwegian company, Tandberg, a provider of telepresence and high-definition video conferencing solutions has set up its R&D centre in Bangalore, with an aim of tapping the engineering talents available in the country. This is the fourth R&D centre of the company, which has a R&D strength of about 230 people.

The Bangalore R&D centre will work in close association with the company's other three R&D centres located in Oslo (Norway), London and New Zealand.

The company has already built a core team of 11 engineers under the leadership of Pradeep Bardia, a veteran in the semiconductor industry, who was previously working with Texas Instruments in their video telephony business.

The new centre has the capability to scale up to a team of 80 engineers. However, the company did not specify any time frame for that.

"Bangalore has got wonderful talents having good attitude towards technology. Apart from bringing us closer to companies like Texas Instruments and Samsung, Bangalore R&D centre will also help us in developing products to address the global market," Snorre Kjesbu, vice president, Technology and Innovation said.

He said the centre would drive the development of innovative technology solutions in the areas of software development, embedded systems and video compression.

Tandberg which claims to be having a sizable market share in the $1.2 billion video conferencing market globally, is also looking out for local partners in India and South East Asia in the areas of mechanical designing and contract manufacturing. Tandberg has got its in-house design and development capabilities, whereas it works with a company in Poland for contract manufacturing.

Tandberg has already got a sales presence in India with close to 20 people working in different parts of the country for marketing its video conferencing, telepresence and mobile video products.