HP Enterprises, a newly formed unit of the US giant focusing on enterprise products and services, is expecting to increase its India business 50 per cent this year, on the back of growth driven by orders from new-age businesses and for government projects.

Neelam Dhawan, Vice-President and General Manager, Enterprise Group, and Country MD, said that the company is optimistic about India and can comfortably beat industry estimates of corporate and government spends on IT.

The company is planning to recruit graduates from campuses, but did not specify a number. “All I can say is that it will be definitely better than last year,” she said.

This development should be viewed in the backdrop of recent job cuts that HP announced, none of which is expected to impact its India workforce. The company, as a policy, does not share hiring information in specific geographies. Much of HP Enterprise’s optimism stems from the fact that new-age companies such as start-ups as well as government units are expected to open their wallets when it comes to spending on IT.

Digital India and smart cities are large projects and coupled with the growth amongst start-ups, both established and new, will fuel growth. In the Indian domestic market, HP competes with the likes of Dell, IBM and others in a market that is estimated to reach $73.3 billion by the end of this year, according to research group Gartner.

“For start-ups, the technology solution has to be very different as they cannot afford to spend time on building solutions, which normally takes 3 months or so,” said Dhawan. To address this need, HP Enterprises will make its software available on a rental basis.

However, apart from start-ups, the $53 billion tech major also believes that traditional banks, telecom companies, retailers and manufacturing companies are expected to add to growth. Also, on the ground, there will not be any changes to the partner ecosystem and existing partners can continue to work towards their respective service lines such as PCs, servers and cloud computing. The company also believes that corporates in India will increase their spends in specific areas such as storage and security.

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