Now, European product developers outsourcing work to India

Source: Expressindia

Lack of skills in their native lands prompt companies from West to breed a new generation of engineers here; healthy exchange in technical fields

EUROPEAN companies are emulating their American counterparts by setting up shop in India apart from growing development teams here.

For instance, The Netherlands-based Decos Technology Group has realised that Indian talent could play a significant role in hardcore product development besides IT services. Their Indian subsidiary, Decos Software Development Pvt Ltd, has been involved in building products being used extensively by customers back home, in Germany and now India as well. Decos has developed products in areas of document management, content management, GPRS-based vehicle tracking and PC-based audiology equipment.

The Decos Audiology workstation sold the highest number of audiometers in The Netherlands’ most prominent hospitals. Decos also crossed the 1,000th car tracker sale last year. With this growth, Decos has established its customer presence in six countries. Product marketing has started in India with the company looking at the selling the audiometer product here. There are enquiries from the US for the audio and vehicle tracking product.

Decos chairman, Paul Veger, is impressed with the growth of Decos India. “We have been able to recruit very talented engineers in Pune and grow our team,” says Veger. Decos India plays a fundamental role in the growth of the Decos Technology Group because its talented engineers can build products that Decos can market worldwide, Veger also says.

Till now the focus was purely on building the brand in The Netherlands. Decos however is now graduating from being a captive unit for the parent, to doing business with other companies in all of Europe. Decos set up base in India at Pune in 2000 and now has 50 people on board. It has just moved to a new facility in Pune on Airport Road. Uday Kulkarni, business development manager, says they are likely to outgrow this facility and look for a second development centre by October 2007.

Lack of skills in The Netherlands is the reason for offshoring picking up. But India is still not high on the destination list, with competition from Ukraine, Russia and Romania — countries which Dutch companies prefer. According to Kulkarni, there are very few Dutch companies operating in India and bilateral trade in IT is not very high. Last year, GPI Consultancy brought a delegation from The Netherlands to check India out. In the last one-and-a-half years, companies like TCS, Wipro, Infosys and L&T Infotech have been servicing clients in The Netherlands with TCS and L&T also setting up offices there.