French engineering company Altran Technologies, which operates across 20 countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas, plans to expand its Indian operations, by tapping the Indian market and also serving global customers in the aerospace, automotive, railways and energy verticals from India, a senior company official said here on Thursday.
The Euro 1.4-billion global leader in innovation and high-tech engineering consulting supports companies worldwide in the development of products and services in diverse verticals.
For scaling up, the firm is looking at both organic and inorganic routes. “We will expand our Indian subsidiary’s operations to a workforce of about 2,000 by 2014 from about 300 now,” Altran group chief technical officer Michel Bailly told reporters here.
Altran said on Thursday that it is in talks with a few Indian manufacturing companies for strategic acquisitions and for ramping up its operations in the aerospace and automotive sectors. “We aim to grow 40 per cent organically and 60 per cent inorganically in the sectors in India that have emerged as a key market,” Bailly added.
With India choosing the French medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) Rafale for the Indian Air Force (IAF), Altran is eyeing contracts from the 50 per cent offset clause built into the deal for 126 fighters from the French aerospace major Dassault Aviation.
Also, to make the best of the emerging offset opportunities, Altran is setting up a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bangalore for innovation in mechanical engineering, embedded and critical systems, and product lifecycle management for its aerospace business with about 1,000 engineers, Bailly said.
