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Microsoft to make HITEC City unit largest one outside US

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD Nov. 14. Microsoft's long-term plans are to make the Microsoft India Development Centre (MIDC) located at HITEC City at Madhapur as its largest development centre, outside of Redmond (USA).

As part of these plans, it will invest Rs.500 crores (US$ 100 million) in infrastructure as well as workforce which will go upto about US$ 500 million by 2005, according to the Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Bill Gates.

Addressing a press conference at the MIDC here on Thursday, Mr. Gates however infused an element of suspense on whether the investment will be in MIDC at Hyderabad alone, by saying "Discussions are on now on whether to invest in multiple sites in India or in a single one.''

However, he reiterated again that their intention was to make MIDC the second biggest of their development centres or the biggest one outside of Redmond. As of now they have development facilities at Redmond (USA), and Israel, and by inference he meant that MIDC will be bigger than the one in Israel.

Mr. Gates, who spent a couple of hours at the MIDC reviewing its performance with project teams, and discussing strategies for growth, said the MIDC was of strategic importance to the company.

He started off the brief interaction with the press saying `This is my first visit to the MIDC, and the work being done here is world class and fantastic. It has helped us get a lot of software faster.'' The centre is playing a critical role in developing products and technologies for the three strategic areas of .NET platform, Windows and Enterprise Storage. The team has already demonstrated that they can develop very high quality products by releasing Visual J.net and Windows Services for Unix, he said.

The MIDC, which has less than 200 workforce, including 20 from Redmond, will grow by hiring people locally, he said adding that India has people with skill sets who can make key contribution to the rest of the world also. "We see growing need to upgrade. We see nothing but upside.'' "Microsoft sales were also growing in India, and in the long run we see this as being very large," he said adding "our sales will grow as PC sales grow."

Srini Koppolu, Managing Director of MIDC, said later Microsoft Corporation had invested US$ 40 million so far in the MIDC which was started in 1998. He clarified that no decision had been taken on having multiple sites adding "we still need to evaluate them (options).''

The US$ 100 million investment announced today is part of the US$ 400 million that Mr. Gates committed on his arrival in Delhi on November 12.

The US$ 400 million, he had said would be under four heads--basic education, co-development with other companies, accelerating work on software languages in India, and investment in MIDC.

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