Terming India as a great growth story for it, global computing giant Dell has said it would further expand its operations and head-count in the country, where it has grown from one person to about 27,000-strong workforce in about a decade.

“India has been a great growth story for Dell. We have quite a large presence there and I personally visit the country few times a year. We have a great team there and about 27,000 people,” the Company’s Global Chief Michael Dell told PTI in an interview here.

Dell, who was here for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, said the company’s plant (in Chennai) and the operations and staff size in the country would continue to expand as per the size of the business.

“If business gets bigger we would expand our operations.

When we started in India, we had one person and then we had one thousand, then we went on to ten thousand and today we have 27,000 people working for us there,” Dell said when asked about the company’s expansion plans for India.

Refusing to put any figures to the company’s hiring or other expansion plans for the country, Dell said that the company has never given any estimates and still it has grown from one person to 27,000 people. “All this has been through our natural progression in the country that would continue going ahead,” he said.

“What is impressive about India is that you have an enormous population of very well educated young people and we love the talent that is available in India, so we are going to keep growing in India.

“We have grown from one person to 27,000 staff without giving estimates and we are still growing continuously and that would continue. One thing you can be assured of is that we will certainly continue to expand our operations in India,” Dell added.

US-based Dell Inc, which was founded by Michael Dell in 1984, is one of the world’s largest makers of computers and other computing devices and a leading player in the entire spectrum of information technology business through its various services and solutions for enterprise and retail customers.

Globally, it has an head-count of more than one lakh people, annual revenue of over $62 billion and profits of about $3.5 billion. Dell has about half a dozen manufacturing plants across the world, including one in Chennai, India.

Recently, there have been reports about making US-listed Dell Inc a privately held company, as also about software giant Microsoft being in talks with private equity investors on a possible buyout of Dell. When asked about these reports, Michael Dell declined to comment.

Asked about the global economic scenario and its impact on the technology sector, Dell said, “There have been some stability, but there are still some challenges both before the US and Europe. I think that the biggest challenge before the world today is creation of jobs, which would be key to growth going ahead.”

“We need more growth for entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises, both in technology and non-technology sectors. I believe all of them would have some amount of technology enabled in their operations and therefore their revival is key to our business.

“Free trade among the nations is also important for growth in the global economy. Meetings like these (WEF Annual Meeting at Davos) may not solve the problems, but they do help in understanding the problems and discussing the possible solutions,” he said.

Asked about the main takeaways from Davos meeting, Dell said: “We come to Davos to understand what the situation is in Europe. So this time we have seen that it is a stable situation, but still a challenging one.

“I am hearing generally a bit more optimism from other business leaders and that is a good thing as they are my customers and if they make more investments they are going to use IT and that would help in our business.”

Michael Dell is one of the Foundation Board members of the WEF and also serves on the governing board of Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. In addition to his role as Chairman of Dell since he founded it in 1984, he has served as its CEO from 1984 until July 2004 and resumed that role in January 2007.

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