Intel sees India as key growth market

Bangalore, July 24: Leading chip maker Intel is penetrating deep into India, with the company taking initiatives to spread computer literacy in rural India and giving an impetus to higher education to meet the future needs of the hardware sector.

The company, which has committed a billion Dollar investment in 2005 for a period of five years, would not shy away from further investments as the country was emerging a key market, besides a dominant player in its scheme of things for future technologies.

In an interview to sources, Intel India Managing Director Ramamurthy Sivakumar said, ''When we announced a billion Dollar investment in India in 2005, we were not looking for five years, but 20 years.''

India was critical to the company both because of its huge market potential and the highly talented manpower that had made the Intel Development Centre (IDC) here a critical component for its future programmes. ''India is very important and one of the fastest growing markets for us,'' he added.

Mr Sivakumar said the IDC in Bangalore was strategically placed and was involved in several programmes and developments that would unfold in the future. In fact, the entire validation of the quad core design was carried out by the Intel India team. The list is long and the numbers, which were a mere 50 a few years ago, had surged to 3,000 and it would be growing, he added.

Besides, to trigger the passion among the employees in IDC, several challenging projects were being offered to not only retain them, but also bring in a sense of belonging to the organisation.

According to Mr Rahul Bedi, Director for Corporate Affairs-South Asia and Manager for India Business Operations, out of a total of 1.7 billion Dollar investment committed for India, about 1.1 billion Dollars had been spent.

Mr Sivakumar said Investment would not be an hindering factor for Intel's growth in India. While mapping the future need for talent, Intel realised the importance to prepare in advanced skilled manpower and through a fresh but widespread initiative. It had approached several technical universities and institutes of higher learning across the country to introduce multicore processor technology in the engineering curriculum. Intel shared content and technology with these institutions who in turn converted it into training material and courseware that could be used in a classroom environment, he added.

The multicore training curriculum offers basic and advanced training, from an initial overview of multicore, to a working experience of parallel programming, including the intricacies of multi-threaded programming and performance optimisation, NIIT said. Besides, Mr Sivakuamr said, Intel was also involved in several research projects in a number of top notch institutions.

Intel is also using its arm Intel Capital, to promote budding entrepreneurs in new technologies and has committed 250 million dollars. ''If necessary, we can increase the fund,'' he added.

The company launched two major initiatives at the conclave to spread computer literacy in rural areas and in education. One was a tie up with the Infrastructure Leasing and Finance Corporation of the Government of India to start Common Service Centres across 100,000 locations in 650 villages to assist local people with the help of these centres gain computer literacy, besides securing information regarding farming and aid in medical diagnostics.

On the Education front it launched the classmate computer available at sub Rs.18,000 including necessary education software and internet ready. These computers to be manufactured initially by HCL and later by Wipro and Zenith computers would be an important classroom environment where in a WiFi net a teacher would teach them on these rugged lap tops. The courseware and the system would be configured in partnership with educomp.

On the technology side, Intel announced the launch of Managed Service Providers Programme with ten Intel channel partners in Western Cities using its latest vPro processor technology that would drive down the IT maintenance costs besides increasing security for managed services providers. Companies such as 3i Infotech, Wipro Infotech and Aenith Infotech were already building applications and services on the vPro platform, Mr Narendra Bhandari, Director for Asia Pacific for SSG developer Relations division said.

The pilot centres where the programme would be launched included Goa, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Indore, Mumbai and Pune. The pilot would uplevel the channel partners towards selling solutions and services.

UNI