General Electric (GE) plans to invest $60 million in its technology centre in Bangalore over the next three years as it sharpens focus on the India market with more local products. The company is aiming a total of 60 homegrown products, designed for the India market, by 2015.
Locally-engineered products such as wind turbines, arc circuit breakers, portable electrocardiograms and infant care products currently contribute to about 10% of GE’s revenue from India, Gopichand Katragadda, managing director, GE India Technology Centre, said on Thursday.
?At this point, we are between 10%-15% in terms of the number of people working on India-specific programmes and we have about 30 products developed for the India market,? he said. ?The goal is that we will be adding to that portfolio in the near future, targetting 60 products and getting to about 20% of the workforce contributing to India-specific programmes,? he said.
The company’s technology team currently comprises 6,000 engineers and scientists, of whom 4,500 are at the John F Welch Technology Centre (JFWTC) in Bangalore and the remaining located across Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai. The JFWTC, started in 2000, is GE’s largest integrated multidisciplinary research and development centre.