Honeywell to Bolster Research in India

BANGALORE, India - Aerospace and high-tech manufacturer Honeywell International Inc. will hire 1,000 software programmers and invest $10 million in India over the next 12 months to bolster its research and development activities, an company official said Monday.

"We are growing and getting to do several important projects," Krishna Mikkilineni, managing director of Honeywell Software Solutions Lab, a subsidiary of the Morristown, New Jersey-based company, told reporters. He spoke after giving a speech at a technology conference in Bangalore, the southern Indian city that has become the country's technology hub.

Honeywell, which makes a range of products from airplane parts to home thermostats, began its Indian operations with a manufacturing unit in Gurgaon, a satellite town of India's capital, New Delhi. It now has research units in Bangalore and the southern town of Madurai. The centers currently employ around 3,000 people.

Scores of companies in advanced nations farm out software development, engineering design and routine office functions to countries such as India and China, where labor costs are lower. The move helps the companies cut costs, but entails job losses in the West in some cases.

In recent years, India has emerged a leader in winning such work and earns US$12.5 billion annually from the practice.

Honeywell's research centers in India cater to the Honeywell group's software and product design needs in aerospace, transportation, power systems and automation sectors.

Mikkilineni said Honeywell's experience in Bangalore had been good, as the city offered access to a large pool of talented software professionals at relatively lower wages.

"There are challenges in doing business here, such as the pressure on infrastructure, but if we had to do it all over again, we would still choose Bangalore," he said.

The company will do some of the new hiring in Madurai, where engineers are plentiful and come at wages even lower than in Bangalore.

Honeywell employs around 100,000 people across the world and had revenues of US$19 billion in the first nine months of 2003.

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Honeywell's India operations: http://india.honeywell.com