The Hindu Business Line : Quantech Global to invest $2 m in India centres

QUANTECH Global Services, an automotive design, analysis and engineering services company, has announced plans to invest about $2 million in their Asian Technical Centres (ATC) to be based in Hyderabad and Bangalore. It would also double its headcount in the near term.

Addressing a press conference here on Friday at their Hitec City centre, the President of Quantech Global, Dr Mukesh Gandhi, and the Chief Financial Officer, Mr David Zischke, said "India and Asia Pacific offer tremendous business opportunity for Quantech Global services. Our growth strategy is to continuously expand and bring design and engineering capabilities closer to customers to keep up swiftness to respond to their business and market requirements.

"We are also constituting marketing teams to address Asia-Pacific market and are in parleys with three companies to be associated with their design work. As Indian companies eye the overseas markets, they would have to conform to the European and other standards of crash test and safety norms. This calls for sustained efforts to streamline the product line, which they can do with our design support," they said.

Having invested about $5 million over the last five years in the India technology centre, the company management envisions the Indian facilities contributing significantly to their business revenues since the customer mandate for product design and development lie with the Indian team, they said.

Mr Zischke said India's economic growth is on a vertical path and it is gaining the most preferred nation status for business, technology advancement and investments by global players.

Quantech is gearing up to take advantage of these emerging opportunities and will continue to invest and expand its ATC. "We employ over 200 engineers in the US and 200 more engineers in India and we are in the process of adding another 200 engineers in Hyderabad as part of our expansion plan. The Bangalore centre has started with about 30 people, "he added.

Quantech Global has two technical centres in the US and one in India in addition to liaison offices in several countries being associated with automakers and component manufacturers such as General Motors, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Delphi, Johnson, Honda and Toyota, the company sees the Indian centres playing a much more significant engineering services role. One of the reasons the company decided to locate a centre in Bangalore was to be closer to some of its clients.