The US-based Hitachi Data Systems is planning to double its business in India this fiscal, riding on demand for data storage systems in the telecom sector.

Though telecom is a growth driver for the company globally, in India it sells most of its cost-saving data storage and application solutions to the banking and finance, and technology sectors.

“We plan to double our business in India this fiscal. Catering to data storage requirements, especially for telecom firms is an area for substantial growth,” Mr Vivekanand Venugopal, Vice-President and General Manager, Hitachi Data Systems-India, told Business Line .

Leading storage vendor

Hitachi Data is one of the leading storage vendors in the world. It clocked revenues of $4 billion (Rs 18,000 crore) during the last fiscal. The Asia-Pacific region was a significant contributor to the company's topline.

According to Mr Venugopal, Hitachi's cloud-based storage system will allow mobile subscribers to store data using their handsets.

Such systems have been successfully rolled out by mobile operators in Asia-Pacific markets like Malaysia, Singapore and Australia.

“Possibilities of tie-ups with Indian mobile service providers are being looked into,” Mr Venugopal said. Select Internet service providers in the country are currently using Hitachi storage services.

In order to ramp up operations, the data storage vendor will also work on increasing its partner networks.

From 26 channel partners in FY'10, the network has doubled to 52 during last fiscal. It now aims to expand this to 72 this year.

The company has eight direct sales centres in the cities of Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, New Delhi and Pune.

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