The Hindu Business Line : India attracts investment commitment of over $8 b from global IT, telecom majors

SETTING the stage for a massive foreign investment inflow, global IT and telecom giants including AMD-SemIndia, Microsoft, Nokia, LG, Ericsson and Cisco have committed investments of over $8 billion in India over the next 3-5 years.

"These investments cover the entire gamut of IT services and telecom equipment manufacturing," an official release said here.

In the last one week, India notched investment commitment of $5.75 billion from three IT heavyweights — Intel, Microsoft and AMD.

While AMD announced an agreement with SemIndia to supply technology for a proposed $3-billion chip-making facility in India, Intel said it would invest $1.05 billion over five years for expanding a research and development (R&D) centre at Bangalore, marketing, education and community programmes and a new $250-million Intel Capital India Technology Fund.

Microsoft Corporation, on Wednesday, announced an investment of $1.7 billion in R&D, education, governance and productivity to be spread over the next four years.

Other major investors included the US-based communications networking major Cisco Systems, which announced its plans to pump in over $1 billion in India.

The investment — to be spread over three years — was the largest to be made by the company outside the US.

The three-year investment plan included $750 million for R&D, $150 million towards providing leasing and financial solutions to Cisco's partners, $150 million in venture capital to invest in Indian start-up companies and another $100 million in customer support operations.

The manufacturing space too witnessed hectic activity with global telecom majors such as Ericsson, Elcoteq, LG, Siemens, and Nokia announcing their plans for telecom manufacturing.

Earlier this year, Nokia announced its decision to establish a mobile-handset manufacturing unit in Chennai with proposed investments pegged at $200 million.

Ericsson inaugurated its telecom manufacturing facility in Jaipur, with an investment of $50 million, and earmarked $100 million as the first phase of investment in services, operations and R&D in Chennai.

"The whole exercise of making `India as telecom and IT equipment manufacturing hub' started with the Communications and IT Minister, Mr Dayanidhi Maran's announcement, immediately after taking over the Ministry in May 2004, of achieving a target of 250 million telephone connections by the year 2007 and taking the tele-density to about 22.

For IT sector, he announced a 10-point agenda," the release said.

Subsequently, during his visits to the US, France and Britain, Mr Maran met chiefs of telecom and IT giants and apprised them about the policy initiatives taken by the Indian Government, the release added.

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