The Hindu Business Line : STMicro to invest $100 m in India over five years

STMICROELECTRONICS, one of the world's largest semi-conductor manufacturers, today said it plans to invest $100 million in India over the next five years and double its headcount to 3,000 in the next two years.

A large part of the investment will go into setting up of a new development centre at Greater Noida near Delhi.

The company has already purchased 25 acres of land for the planned facility, the President and Chief Executive Officer of STMicroelectronics, Mr Pasquale Pistorio, told reporters here.

The company is expanding its operations in the country and its third design and development facility in the country was inaugurated at Noida today.

The new wing has a built-up area of over 70,000 square feet and will be able to house 550 additional software engineers. The Noida centre is the largest design facility outside Europe, Mr Pistorio said.

STMicroelectronics is also setting up a design facility at Bangalore that would employ 100 software engineers. The centre will develop telecom applications and will be functional in April, he said.

With the new facilities, the company aims to double its headcount from about 1,400 at present to 3,000 by 2006.

The Indian facilities will be used for designing integrated circuits and developing software solutions in India.

Mr Pistorio, however, ruled out any plans for setting up a manufacturing facility in India in the near future. "We will concentrate on research and development and optimum utilisation of the current infrastructure," he said.

The company's Indian facilities specialise in developing technology for applications in set-top boxes, DVD, wireless telecom, multimedia and imaging. Its clients include BPL, Onida and Videocon in the consumer electronics segment and its clients in the telecom segment include ITI, Alcatel, Siemens and Ericsson.