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One of the oldest telecom players in the country Ericsson India is on an expansion spree in India. The company recently unveiled its new R&D center based at Chennai. The Chennai center will focus on developing charging solutions and value-added applications for the pre-paid and multimedia segments. Ericsson already has two offices in Chennai and this latest R&D center is the third facility in the city. The already existing R&D center was inaugurated in February 2006. As part of its R&D initiative in the country, Ericsson has also partnered with Wipro to outsource R&D. The company wants to achieve greater efficiencies by forging strategic relationships with external suppliers and partners.

With the launch of the new Chennai R&D center Ericsson has considerably upped its R&D presence in India. Its focus on charging solutions in the Chennai center clearly indicates the company's intention to evolve centers of excellence. Moreover, the charging solutions being in the value added space the Chennai center will deal with electronic top-up and multimedia messaging. The company's Gurgaon center focuses on areas like systems integration, product customization, and regional network integration among others. The Chennai R&D center right now has an employee size of about 50 and according to company officials it will be scaled up in time. The Chennai team will also work closely with Ericsson's global R&D teams.

According to Mats Granyrd, MD, Ericsson India, "We are highly committed to India and our investments in fostering R&D will continue. We have committed an investment of $100 mn for the next few years." The company's huge thrust on R&D is not surprising, given the fact that Ericsson is one of the biggest spenders towards R&D initiatives in the telecom space. For instance, it spends close to 16% of its revenues on R&D initiatives.

In terms of how different this center is for Ericsson as compared to other centers it has, the company did not divulge much information on the specifics. Company sources claim that the center's activities will be very significant. Moreover, with Indian mobile market having a huge pre-paid mobile consumer, the center is also expected to indulge in developing solutions for the pre-paid space.

Chennai per se, Ericsson upping its presence will further strengthen its stature as emerging telecom hub of South Asia. Commenting on this development Union Minister for Communications and IT, Dayanidhi Maran says, "The blazing growth in the telecom sector in India needs committed players like Ericsson that will give our developers to come out with state of the art technologies."

Ericssson today has a pan India presence and provides its services to all leading operators in the country. In the recent times, the company has executed a series of localization moves in India. First in that series of initiatives is broad basing on its technology transfer by expanding its manufacturing portfolio from AXE switching manufacturing to GSM radio base station (RBS) series at its facility in Kukas in Rajasthan. The manufacturing plant is doing high degree of country specific work. For instance, the GSM RBS manufacturing is custom made for Indian conditions and be able to tolerate unique Indian weather patterns, power cuts and voltage fluctuations.

The company also has a systems integration competency center in Gurgaon, aimed at creating local solutions. The center has aggressive plans to grow to about 100 telecom professionals who will focus on aspects like regional support and specialize on areas like VAS products like MMS, mediation and network management. Ericsson has also created customization design center that will come out with custom specific local solutions in the VAS space. With a plethora of localization initiatives, Ericsson is well posed to garner a major chunk of the Indian telecom opportunity.

Shrikanth G
shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in