We will continue to grow over here

Q&A/ Srini Koppolu

Seven years is a long period. Long enough for Microsoft India Development Centre (MIDC) in Hyderabad to grow from just around 20 employees to around 1,000 human resources.

"We will be hiring more," says Srini Koppolu, managing director of MIDC. The India Development Centre of Microsoft is the company's second product development centre outside the US. And Koppolu says, "MIDC has been very successful for the company. We will continue to grow over here."

Koppolu has been with Microsoft Corporation since 1989. He moved to India in 1998 to set up the IDC. Earlier in Redmond, he held positions of development manager and development lead in various product groups and has been an important contributor to Microsoft Office and Windows.

Hailing from Ongole in Andhra Pradesh, he has done his MS in Computer Science from University of Louisiana, Lafeyette, and BE (Mechanical) from Andhra University. Koppolu shares with Business Standard his views on what's in store for Microsoft in India.

It's been seven years of existence for IDC. Going forward what are your plans?

Today, we are 1,000 people on the campus and will be doubling this number by June 2006. IDC has been a huge success for the company and therefore the centre will continue to grow significantly in the coming years. This growth will not only be in terms of employee numbers but also in terms of the amount of development work that emerges out of it.

It was earlier announced that MIDC will be filing 70 patents this year. What's the current status on that?

Yes. We will be filing 70 patents this year. But filing of patents involves time not only of the inventors but also of the legal team. Every quarter, we prioritise products for filing patents. Last year, MIDC filed 40 patents.

The company has recently launched Data Protection Manager, a disk-based back-up product, that was co-developed by the centres in Hyderabad and Redmond. How has been the response to it so far?

The response has been very positive. Companies are very happy that finally they have a device that can save all data on a disk instead of tapes. It is an important product space for us. We have deployed it internally and have seen that it can enable us to save $2 million a year.

What are the other products that the IDC is working on?

We have been working on developer and platform offerings for mobile devices. This includes Windows 5.0, and Visual Studio for mobile devices, which basically enable creation of applications for web-based services in mobile devices. A user can, therefore, access his/her mails and view attachments on the mobile phone itself.

Besides, he can work on MS Word and Excel spreadsheets even on the move. We have also started working on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, which is being completely done out of the IDC. (RFID refers to technologies that use radio waves to identify people or objects).

With this technology, manual registration of items that enter or leave a warehouse is not required. All the relevant information is read from the items automatically through RFID technology.

Detailed item information is automatically entered into the central server. So, this device will basically help a customer get a consolidated view of what's coming in and going out of the warehouse. It should be out in the market in the next calendar year.

How much does India contribute to Microsoft's global revenues and how do you see it growing in future?

Last year, India contributed $300 million out of the $40 billion that Microsoft earned globally. Most of our revenues in India came from the government and the corporate sector. In the individual consumer space, piracy is a big issue.

Moreover, many people here assume that paying for software is an additional cost. But these are the same people who would not mind spending more than Rs 10,000 on a mobile phone. We need to bring more awareness among the general public in this regard.

Besides, the installed base of computers needs to increase. We, however, see the right signals now with installed base growing and broadband penetration increasing. There is definitely a lot of focus on India by Microsoft.

According to a recent survey among students of 20 engineering colleges, conducted by ACNielsen ORG-MARG's CampusTrack T-Schools '05, Microsoft is the most sought after employer. What does this mean to you?

This is the second time that we are being voted as the most sought after employer. It is a clear reflection of what students believe about the organisation. Working at MIDC gives them a satisfaction of working for a product development company, for they may be involved in developing something that many will be using tomorrow.

That is why we have an attrition rate of just five per cent. We hope that we top the rankings in the next year too.

Today, freshers including those who have joined us with less than one year of work experience comprise between 30 per cent and 40 per cent of our total employee strength over here. We have been doing campus recruitment from 20 colleges. Going forward, there will be more intake of freshers from greater number of colleges as well.