The Hindu Business Line : National Instruments to continue investing here

Chennai June 25 National Instruments, producer of automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software, will continue investing in India and is open to acquiring companies to expand its presence here, according to Mr Pete Zogas, Senior Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, National Instruments.

The company, with headquarters in Austin, Texas, has spent close to $420 million over the last five years on global R&D, according to annual reports on its Web site.

"The volume of outsourced projects coming into India and the original ideas born in this region give us enough opportunities to continue investing here," he told Business Line via telephone on a recent visit to the company's operations in Bangalore. He did not share India-specific R&D spends.

India has been the fastest growing market (about 25 per cent growth year-on-year) for National Instruments in the last few years. The company clocked revenues of about $660 million last fiscal, of which Asia's contribution was about 20 per cent. Consequently, the company has been doubling the R&D spends at its Bangalore centre, Mr Zogas said. The company's global R&D spend is about 16 per cent of its revenues.

The company has opened a new selling, marketing and customer support office at Banglore and plans to set up another at New Delhi to cater to the demand from North India. The offices would train customers (academia and businesses) on its graphics tools.

Tapping niche markets

The company is expanding its offerings beyond testing and is working on developing solutions for niche markets. Until now, it developed general-purpose platforms over which partners would develop industry-specific applications. As a result, the company catered to a wide range of industries, each of which contributed about 10 per cent to its revenues (about $66 million).

"While we want to continue addressing diverse markets, we also feel the need to build applications that align with certain industries," Mr Zogas said. The company recently came out with tool kits specific to areas such as wireless, telecom and high fidelity sound.

Embedded system tools

National Instruments is also focusing on developing applications for embedded systems. It recently partnered with toy maker Lego to develop a software that can programme automatic toy robots.

Called `LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT' the software is based on the company's flagship product `LabVIEW', that is used by scientists and engineers worldwide to design, control, and test industrial and consumer products. Using instructions and programming guides, one can build up to four functionally different robot models.