New York-headquartered Qualitrol, a provider of monitoring solutions for electrical assets, is to invest $50 million (about ₹340 crore) to set up a Global Design Centre (GDC) in Ahmedabad to develop both hardware and software technologies.

The GDC would be the company’s first in Asia and would employ 70 engineers in the first year of its operations.

“We aim to collaborate with local power transmission companies and help create a reliable power infrastructure network that can address vast set of challenges that are hindrance to the fast growth of this nation,” said Ashish Kulshrestha, Vice-President, Technology at Qualitrol. The centre would come up in the heart of Ahmedabad city across a 14,000 sq ft area, and is expected to be operational by August-end. The GDC will target both local and global markets, and would also house a customer training centre to address local requirements.

“India is on the threshold of major reforms and is poised to become the third-largest economy of the world by 2030. Crucial to this growth are world class infrastructure, continuous power supply, skilled manpower and robust technology infrastructure,” Kulshrestha said.

Later, Qualitrol would manufacture solutions specifically designed to address Indian needs. However, it is still in the initial phase of discussions and there are no concrete plans around it, he said.

Now, the company has only a sales office in Gurgaon. Qualitrol’s India expansion plans are in line with the Centre’s ‘Make in India’ policy.

“Local presence in India will help liaison with the local companies and understand their requirements better. And this where the engineering team in India can play a pivotal role by providing the required engineering depth and support to local projects,” said Pankaj Kashyap, India Technology Director at Qualitrol.

The recruitment of 70 engineers, which is the largest for the firm in the world, represents all the engineering functions. Qualitrol expects to grow at 30-40 per cent during the next three years, or year on year.

Set up in 1945, Qualitrol provides condition-based monitoring solutions across the globe for high-value electrical assets. These include partial discharge monitoring asset protection equipment and power grid applications across generation, transmission and distribution systems.

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