Comments
Upbeat on business prospects in India, the Japanese technological major NEC plans to double its India headcount while finalising plans to set up an R&D centre.
NEC, which already has significant presence in India offering solutions across several sectors, including telecom, authentication, payment systems, employs over 2000 people now. “We are looking at doubling the headcount and taking this up past 4,000 associates over the next two-three years, while also scouting for a location to set up a Research and Development centre,” Takayuki Inaba, Managing Director of NEC Technologies India, part of the diversified NEC Corporation said.
“NEC is in the process of finalising plans on selection of ideal location for the R&D centre,” he said.
Speaking to Business Line along with Katsumi Emura, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President and Member of Board, NEC Corporation, Inaba said, “We are working on a number of important projects in India and look at opportunities in the areas such as Smart Cities. We have a number of technology driven solutions that could make a difference to these upcoming projects.”
Emura, who overseas the innovation side of the NEC Corporation, said, “The focus now is on developing innovative proof of concepts, which can be simply replicated across in number of locations. These could be urban security, waste management, or even secure payment systems. While no one solution fits all, these solutions can be customised for local requirements.”
Unified payment cards
Inaba said, “NEC, which functions across several business divisions, including providing solutions to telecom sector, is eyeing the emerging areas such as unified payment cards for public transport, solutions for smart cities across a number of areas including transportation, and transportation systems have been of particular focus for the company.
Referring to one such opportunity which NEC was actively engaged with, Emura said “NEC has formed a venture with Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation to engage with the Government on an innovative logistics solutions. The venture seeks to harness the potential of NEC's Logistics Visualization System, whose focus is on reduction of transport lead time, inventory reduction and improvement of production planning accuracy.”
Artificial intelligence
Referring to impact of artificial intelligence on human being, with particular reference to taking away some of the routine jobs, Emura felt that a new set of jobs based on innovation would come up. Citing the example of agriculture, he said barely 2-3 per cent population in Japan work on agriculture, rest of those who were earlier dependant on agriculture have moved to other services.
“We need to innovate and change the way we do things. Already at least each individual is connected to four devices as a part of Internet of things and in some locations this goes up to 10 devices. This only shows how complex it is getting,” he said.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.