Intel to ramp up partnerships in India: Santhosh Viswanathan

Intel is working with local partners and ecosystem players to ensure that India becomes a powerhouse in electronics manufacturing.  

Santhosh Viswanathan, Managing Director and Vice President – Sales Marketing & Communications Group, Intel India told businessline, “I’m very bullish about the fact that high-quality products can be built and made in India where we want to enable that OEMs ecosystem, we want to enable companies that can come and build products.” 

Intel had recently partnered with Gurugram-based engineering and contract manufacturing firm, VVDN Technologies, to manufacture enterprise-grade products for companies in India. While Intel has partnerships with about 117 companies in India, the number is much higher in other countries, including China. Viswanathan, who took over the current role at Intel earlier this year, is keen to change that equation.  

The success for me is when India becomes a powerhouse of electronic manufacturing, or India becomes a powerhouse of technology in general, we are a powerhouse in designing products, and we are the powerhouse of talent, unquestioned in the world. Now, how do we take all of that and apply and start building products that the world can use, start building elements that we don’t need to be reliant on few parts of the world,” he said.  

“I want to grow the partner ecosystem because then we will really go change the equation. We are a large nation and digital is the fabric of this country, and if we start innovating and start building technology products around it, we are unstoppable. So that’s where I would see where we would go,” he added.  

According to Viswanathan, in addition to manufacturing, India should also focus on creating data centre infrastructure. “We have 20 per cent of the world’s internet users but we have less than 2 per cent of the world’s servers. So, compute infrastructure is as important as any other form of infrastructure in a country, especially when a country’s fabric is becoming internet driven. So, that’s one area that I’m passionate about with regard to go and see how we can accelerate that to be much stronger.” 

When asked if Intel would invest in setting up a semiconductor manufacturing facility in India, Viswanathan said “Intel is very committed in helping develop that ecosystem. The world needs a balanced supply chain. India, I think, is making a lot of progress in building this infrastructure. The beauty of us is we have such a huge ecosystem that’s designing the best products in the world, that’s the hardest piece of the chain and we’ve been doing that for many years. So, I think one of the ways to go look at it is that we already have a key capability of designing products in India” 

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