Fujitsu to expand India operations

Japanese IT major Fujitsu is planning to expand its India operations and grow rapidly over the next five years. The consolidated revenue of Fujitsu India and Fujitsu Consulting India for the financial year 2006-07 was $35 million (around Rs 140 crore). The company sees a huge potential in the country where Fujitsu can rely not only on application development and software services, but also on hardware product development.

Chiaki Ito, corporate senior executive vice president and representative director for Next-generation Technology Strategy and R&D for Fujitsu, on his first visit to India told Business Standard: "The Indian IT market will grow by nearly 20 per cent annually and I expect more growth from the operations in India." The company, since April this year, re-established the IT business in India with a new management focus. It plans to strengthen its relation with distributors, system integrators and partners, and to enhance their support capabilities for them.

The company also plans to set up its business process outsourcing (BPO) operations in India. It recently ended its JV with RPG Enterprise by selling its 29.5% stake in Zensar. Industry sources say the firm is already looking for acquisitions in this space. "It is no doubt that we should enhance our BPO capability on a global scale, since software and services business is our dominant business. India has excellent know-how and resources for BPO," is all that Ito says.

"India is not the place where we expect low-cost labour and simple software development like coding. However, we will not build our R&D centre in a hurry. It is important for Fujitsu to make sure that those R&D centre shall be created based on our global mid/long term strategy," he added.

Currently, the company has 1,400 people working for its consulting and products segment. The company's global delivery centre in Pune, Noida and Hyderabad caters to its US operations.