Conexant to invest $250 mn in five years

Hyderabad January 06, 2006
Plans to set up a campus in Hyderabad
Conexant Systems Inc, a provider of semiconductor solutions for broadband communications and digital home, will be investing more than $250 million in India over the next five years. The investment will comprise expenses for payroll, capital equipment and R&D facilities. The $720- million company is planning to set up a campus in Hyderabad and will be making some announcement in this regard shortly. Addressing the media, Dwight W Decker, chairman and chief executive officer of Conexant Systems, Inc, said, “We plan to expand our commitment to this region as we continue to build a foundation for future revenue growth. In calendar year 2005, we increased our engineering headcount in India to 775 and this year we plan to grow to 1,200. Within the next five years, we expect our product development team in India to grow to more than 2,000.” Conexant has around 2,400 employees globally and is headquartered in California. In India, the company has an engineering presence in Hyderabad, Noida, Bangalore and Pune. Personnel in these facilities work for various business units like broadband media processing, broadband access, universal and voice access and wireless networking. The Hyderabad team, with 175 engineers, focuses on VLSI (very large scale integration) and embedded software design. The Noida team, with 400 people, works on next-generation embedded software and semiconductor solutions for digital television set-top boxes, wireless networking and network management products. The Bangalore team, with 75 people, is focused on design, development and test of hardware solutions for each of the company’s business units. The Pune team, with around 125 engineers, specialises in the design of highly complex VLSI Systems-on-a-Chip (SoC). “We are able to significantly increase our engineering bandwidth for a fraction of what it would cost in India. This helps us meet our operating-expense targets and improve profitability too,” Decker added.