The Hindu Business Line : ADC Krone to double engg, BPO teams here

, Telecom equipment maker ADC Krone plans to double its India engineering and BPO teams as it expects to shift more work from other locations to Bangalore over the next couple of years.

ADC, which provides communication network infrastructure for the wireless, wireline cable, broadcast, and enterprise networks around the world, has set up a new development facility in Bangalore that could accommodate up to 350 people.

At present, ADC Krone has 140 people in Bangalore split almost equally between the research and development (R&D), business process outsourcing (BPO) and enterprise IT application teams.

Mr Gokul Hemmady, Chief Financial Officer, ADC Krone said the company was moving more of its research and development, shared support services like finance and accounting, and professional services to its centre in Bangalore.

"We are looking at doubling our headcount in Bangalore to around 350 in the next two to three years," Mr Hemmady said.

The software engineering team at Bangalore is the largest such team for ADC Krone worldwide.

Product lines

Further, Mr Hemmady said the company plans to shift manufacturing of some of its product lines from Australia to its manufacturing subsidiary Krone Communications Ltd in Bangalore. About 100 product lines of ADC Krone's networking and telecom equipment are manufactured in Bangalore mainly for the Indian market.

Mr Hemmady also said that ADC might revisit the open offer for acquiring additional stake in Krone Communications Ltd. "If we get the right price, we will look at it" said Mr Hemmady.

Pursuant to the acquisition of 51 per cent stake in Krone Communications in early 2005, ADC had made an offer to acquire an additional 23 per cent stake.

The open-offer did not sail through, as the price of Rs 92 offered by ADC was unattractive and significantly lower than the then market price of Rs 130. Krone shares ended at Rs 145.10 on the BSE on Wednesday.

The Karnataka State Electronics Development Corporationowns 11 per cent , while the total public shareholding stands at around 38 per cent.

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