Harman, Wipro to tie-up to face competition

Bangalore, Sep 2: The US-based Harman International Industries and IT major Wipro Technologies on Tuesday, Sep 2 announced the launch of a joint embedded engineering centre in India. Speaking to newspersons on Tuesday, Sep 2 on the tie-up, Harman's Chairman and CEO Dinesh C Paliwal said the new venture in India was an important milestone for enriching the company's portfolio of cutting-edge engineering solutions.

Mr Paliwal said "Wipro's proven development and product management expertise will compliment our company's core audio and infotainment skills to deliver innovative customer solutions. This will make us more competitive and help us introduce new products in the market faster''.

The Chairman and CEO said his company had not come to India to gain cost advantage but to utilise the reputed skill force. ''This is not a margin play. We are not here for cutting costs,'' he added.

The Harman India Development Centre was formally commissioned at the Wipro's campus. The Centre would operate from Wipro's existing Bangalore and Chennai facilities, complementing an earlier agreement, which outsourced Harman's global IT infrastructure services to Wipro. Speaking on the occasion, Wipro Ltd Chairman Azim Premji said, ''Wipro's commitment to its innovation agenda will enable us to collaborate with Harman to localise, improve market speed, create new avenues for business and help our partner maintain a competitive edge''.

Wipro Joint CEO and IT Business ED, Suresh Vaswani, said the engineering centre was not a R and D outsourcing contract with Harman, but was a co-development centre.

Mr Vaswani said ''Partnership with Harman gives us a big opportunity to leverage expertise in the automotive space. We have worked with technology providers and telecom companies. We see big opportunity in this deal''.

Beginning with about 250 employee resources through this engagement, Harman planned to grow its resource footprint in India to about 1000 by 2011.

The Centre would broaden and optimise Harman's foot-print for developing audio and infotainment solutions across automotive, consumer and professional markets.

UNI