The Hindu Business Line : Infineon forms corporate software group; bets big on Bangalore

INFINEON Technologies, which has formed a global corporate software group, plans to ramp up its Indian software operations to 800 people in the next 18-24 months.

The company has worldwide software development activities across Europe and Asia but a lot of its future growth will happen out of Bangalore, said Mr Santanagopalan Surya, Senior Vice-President, Corporate Software Group, and MD, Infineon India.

The company has about 1,000 software developers across its global operations.

"This move reflects Infineon's move to streamline software development so that we can move to offering semiconductor solutions to our customers," said Mr Surya, speaking to Business Line. The Bangalore centre will work on developing solutions for the wireless and telecom industry, the automotive segment and for wireline and broadband communications, Mr Surya said, declining to say how much the company plans to invest in the Indian centre.

Corporate Software has been formed as a new group at Infineon. The Bangalore centre, which has been handling both hardware design as well as software, will reflect the company's India focus on software and on India, Mr Surya said, adding that the hardware design would also continue at Bangalore.

Infineon India has a 350-strong software team currently, while about 150 people are working on hardware design out of Bangalore.

"Infineon recognises the software capability and potential of Bangalore and we plan to enable Infineon to offer the increased software content we require cost effectively at high quality and enable the company to differentiate its solutions in the market," Mr Surya said.

Bangalore will be working on wireless communications solution for mobile handsets as well as for telecom operators, providing multimedia solutions, software and hardware integration to provide reference designs. It will also work on automotive solutions, software for micro-controllers and low-level drivers, and on wireline communicationsSoftware development is handled out of Germany and Denmark in Europe, and India, China, Singapore and Japan in Asia. With the increased focus on developing semiconductor solutions for our customers, the corporate software group will grow a lot in Bangalore, he said.