Taiwanese institute opens offshore centre in Chennai

The Institute of Information Industry (III) of Taiwan has announced opening of its offshore development centre in Chennai to provide research and development platforms for Taiwan's ICT (information and communication technology) companies.

Set up at an investment of $1.5 million, the 8500 sq ft state-of-the-art offshore centre, located at Olympia Technology Park in the city, will initially hire 60 professionals. III has plans to invest $6.7 million by 2008. It will ramp up the operations to 200 employees by that time.

Addressing a press conference, G J Huang, executive vice-president, Institute of Information Industry, said the company located its offshore centre in Chennai considering several factors like skilled manpower availability, low wage rates, good air connectivity, reliable power infrastructure and incentives from the state government.

III had also considered other cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad to set up its offshore centre.

He added that the centre represented the first partnership in software between India and Taiwan.

The centre will focus on research and development works on network security applications, embedded systems, IC design module packages, software and ITES development projects for private and public sector companies in Taiwan.

Earlier, Y S Shih, vice-minister, ministry of external affairs, Taiwan, said that many more Taiwanese ventures would come to India in the near future as Taiwan and India complemented each other in IT, with Taiwan having expertise in hardware and manufacturing and India being known for its software and system designs.

With the technology and model of offshoring services, the offshore centre will make effective use of the large number of outstanding information professionals in Tamil Nadu, so that their research and development outcomes may be used to improve Taiwan's industrial competitiveness, he added.

Funded by both the government and the private sector, III provides a neutral source of expertise independent of both partisan politics and individual corporate agendas.

Headquartered at Taipei, III pursues research and development work, serving as the think tank on IT policy to the government, proliferating ICT applications and seeking opportunities for international collaboration.

Shih is heading a Taiwanese investment and trade delegation, comprising around 90 businesses and 130 individuals, which will visit India between May 10 "� 18 with a view to strengthening Taiwan's export trade and investment.