French telecom giant Alcatel will invest up to Euro 500 million ($600 million) in India over the next four years and take headcount at its research and development facilities here to 2,000.
"Alcatel will invest Euro 400 to 500 million in India in next three to four years," Communications and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran told reporters after the inauguration of GSM mobile phone equipment manufacturing facility at Mankapur unit of ITI Ltd in Gonda district of the state.
The investments by Alcatel in India will be in manufacturing, research and development and allied activities.
Alcatel currently has 750 engineers in India working on new technologies. "By end of this year or early next year we will have 2,000 people in India engaged in development efforts," Alcatel's chairman and chief executive officer Serge Tchuruk said after the inauguration of the manufacturing facility.
Congress President and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Chairperson Sonia Gandhi inaugurated the facility.
India will emerge as a major research and development base for Alcatel, which has 16,000 engineers worldwide engaged in developing new technologies for the world market.
Tchuruk said the company's joint venture with C-DoT for developing technologies around WiMax will be functional in Chennai this month end and would have close to 500 engineers.
The GSM manufacturing at Mankapur could start only after Alcatel was convinced by Maran to transfer technology. The government is also in talks with Alcatel to transfer technology for DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) broadband access equipment.
"We are the world leaders in DSL. We are considering transferring this technology to ITI," Tchuruk said.
The ADSL switches would be manufactured in ITI's facility at Naini near Allahabad. The government is also talking to Alcatel to transfer technology for manufacturing GSM switches, which would be manufactured at ITI unit in Pallakkad in Kerala.
The Mankapur facility will churn out 10 million lines annually. It has capacity of 2,000 base stations which will be doubled over the coming months. ITI has a confirmed order of 30 million lines from Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, and the company's facility in Rae Bareily would also start manufacturing GSM equipment in next two months to meet the demand.
As the manufacturing of mobile telecom equipment at ITI gathers pace, Alcatel will make India a hub of exports or the other markets across the globe.
"With ITI we will get a big market share in India. India can be an exporter of products. It can be a base for export of mobile and fixed line switches to other markets," the Alcatel chairman said.
With the roadmap for revival ready after the government pumped in Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) in ITI, the company is expecting to double its turnover in 2005-06 to Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion) from Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 15 billion) last fiscal.
Last year the company had a net loss of Rs 250 crore (Rs 2.50 billion) but this year it hopes to be in black. Its confirmed order book stands at Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion) and is expecting an order of additional 30 million GSM lines from BSNL.
In course of restructuring ITI has brought its workforce down 14,00 from the peak of 32,000 through natural attrition and voluntary retirement scheme.
As the company enters high technology manufacturing the excess staff would be trained for deployment of the equipment, a job that was earlier outsourced, Maran said.
