The Hindu Business Line : Dell plans to double headcount

Personal computer giant Dell Inc plans to double its headcount in India to 20,000 over the next three years. It also plans to set up a hardware engineering team in the country, said the Founder and Chairman, Mr Michael Dell, in Bangalore on Monday.

Dell has close to 10,000 people in India, majority of whom are contact centre employees offering sales, marketing and technology support from three different locations. The company also has a small research and development (R&D) team of 300 in Bangalore.

Mr Dell told a press conference that his company would continue to invest in expanding its R&D and contact centre operations. "India produced two lakh engineering graduates in 2005. We see this as a fantastic opportunity for us to attract some of the best and bright engineers for our software and hardware development activities. We have chosen to invest in tremendous talent in the country."

Mr Dell said his company plans to double the size of its product development team from 300 within the next year.

It proposes to set up a hardware engineering team in India this year, which will focus on server design and storage technologies, he added.

New products and form factors of servers will be designed out of the centre.

The company has 14 per cent share of the server market in India and is growing by 2-3 per cent every year, according to Mr Paul-Henri Ferrand, Vice-President and General Manager, South Asia, Dell Asia, Singapore.

"Server design in 2P (2 processor) racks and 4P racks will be taken up by the India centre. Blade servers is a niche segment and growing fast," he said, adding that the company had a good grasp of the HPCC (High Performance Computing Cluster) market in India.

Unit location

Mr Dell said his company was in discussions with several State governments to set up a manufacturing unit in India, but is yet to finalise a location.

"We have been in discussions with several State Governments with regard to incentives, infrastructure and logistics to be able to put in place a really first-class capability for manufacturing products of great volumes," he said. This proposed unit, where it would initially start assembly operation, would first seek to ``satisfy local demand and then look to exports,'' he added.

Mr Dell said India needed to follow China, Taiwan and Singapore in setting up manufacturing plants for semiconductors and flat panel screens to attract further investments from computer makers. "That will be a significant pre-condition for the manufacturing sector to reach its full potential in the computer sector," he added.

LOCAL SALES

Mr Dell said India was among the fastest growing markets and that the company expects to sustain a growth of over 40 per cent here. Last quarter, Dell's sales in India grew by over 40 per cent, he said.

India is the fourth largest market in Asia Pacific for Dell after China, Japan and South Korea. Dell commands a 3-4 per cent share in the Indian PC market.

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