Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

[khemara_qc]

Silicon Valley Rejects India’s Pall Of Gloom

SHIV AROOR

SAN JOSE, JUNE 12: The serene streets—lined with palms of every sort and afflicted by the softest sun—don’t give away the muted excitement.

The techies dress in their easiest garb. They move around in understated professionalism. But even more understated is their bullishness about cranking up their business in India.

Indeed, deeper conversations force one to question the pall of gloom surrounding Dalal Street. No such clouds here. The only one’s you see are serene and puffy white. The techies feel them as they go home.

Software lords and IT brass from the Bay Area and other US infotech hotspots are hardly the sentimental types. Networking solutions companies, broadband internet providers, storage companies, website performance-enhancing firms, satellite bandwidth providers: each one has a good reason to be upbeat about India.

San Jose-based Cisco Systems senior VP and GM (routing technology) Prem Jain says ops in India are growing as fast as his company’s fastest growing markets. Cisco predicts that India will have 10-million broadband internet services subscribers in less than four years. “Everything is on the right track. Development is increasing,” Jain promises.

Qualcomm Inc, a provider primarily of CDMA technology, has ramped up the India Plan. Hear out what Anil Kriplani, senior VP (global tech marketing) has to say. “India is on the cutting edge. Regulatory flexibility has come only in the last two years, and there’s now tremendous room for growth.”

Hughes Network Systems says it is sniffing around for the right time (which will be soon) to launch some of its newest technology. As Mahesh P Bhave, vice president (business development) puts it, “If Delhi wanted to become wi-fi enabled, all the government has to do is call is and say ‘end-to-end’.”

Scientific Atlanta, a developer of high-end content delivery and direct-to-home (DTH) technology, wants to be big in India’s conditional access market. “When CAS comes through, we will license manufacture of set-top boxes to an Indian manufacturer. We are on call to go over to India almost any week now,” says Bob McIntyre, chief technology officer.

Atlanta-based Tripoint Global, which makes satellite receivers, will beef up Indian operations. Responsibilities of the company’s customer service and feed design abilities are expected to zoom.

Dallas-based Tekelek, maker of gen-next switching solutions and signalling, opened shop in India three months ago. It is already on the job to add muscle to the 50-member outfit. “India has been very successful because of high reliability and performance networks. It is very competitive, so we have to build quick,” says Monty Johnson, president and GM (network signalling division).

Amidst all this, the rallying cry remains. “Open up!” it says. Profit margins remain low. But then that’s an incentive to build economies of scale.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=61213