"We plan to have a software development centre in China in Beijing within the next five to six months," chief strategy officer of Wipro Technologies Sudip Nandy said.
"We are now talking to Chinese officials on the modalities," Nandy said, adding the company plans to locate the centre in China at the Zhongguancun Software Park, which is often dubbed as China's 'Silicon Valley.'
Wipro is expected to be the first Indian IT major to open a software development facility in Beijing as others, including Infosys and Satyam have opened their software facility in Shanghai, the commercial hub of the Communist giant.
TCS has chosen Hangzhou in east China for its software development facility. Beijing officials are rolling out the red carpet for Indian software companies and held a successful 'Sino-India Software Industry Cooperation Summit' in Beijing on February 27.
Wipro, the latest entrant to China among India's software majors, opened its office in Shanghai late last year by establishing Wipro (Shanghai) Ltd, which is which is an office-cum-delivery centre.
Appearing bullish on the Chinese market, Nandy said Wipro has so far done two 'pan-China roll-outs' of SAP applications implemented in multiple cities, for Olympus (Beijing) Sales & Service and Sanyo.
During the first phase of operations, Wipro is looking at two sectors among China's multinational customers, who have a presence in China and who want to roll out a SAP programme for local operations.
In the second phase, Wipro plans to target the foreign subsidiaries of Chinese multinationals though there aren't many, Nandy noted.
However, he pointed out Chinese computer giant Lenovo was one example and there could be many more Chinese conglomerates in the future.
Commenting on chances of Indian software companies getting contracts for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Nandy appeared pessimistic. "None of the Indian companies have done very significant front-end work for large events," he said.
However, he said that what might happen is that though the prime contract for software solutions and other IT services for major events like the 2008 Beijing
Olympics may be bagged by big global brands, the actual execution of the project may be done by an Indian company.
"It might happen in Beijing too. A lot of the technically complex, time-critical, challenging technology work is done by Indians under different umbrellas or consortiums," he said.
