Texas Instruments and San Jose-based Cadence Design were among the first to set up R&D in India in the mid-1980s, drawn by the legions of English-speaking software engineers who could be hired at about 20 percent of the cost of engineers in the US.
The opening of India’s economy in the early 1990s and the establishment of the software services industry drew more foreign firms looking to cut costs and tap emerging markets.
“From when a few companies offshored non-critical design work, we have seen India emerge as a preferred destination for design and development of chip, board and embedded software,” said Jaswinder Ahuja, managing director of Cadence India.
Firms first focused on the “D” in R&D, but research has grown in importance and many of the facilities in India are now the largest outside their home base.
Half of Cisco’s core R&D work, including innovations in WiMAX and optical networks, and about 40 percent of SAP’s ideas for processes and product development come from India.
IBM’s India Research Labs do a “fair share of patenting,” boosting its record numbers every year, director Guruduth Banavar said in Bangalore.
Its new US$100 million-mobile communications research, Mobile Web, is the first time a big project has been driven from outside the US, he said.
“For a research lab, it’s the best environment to be in: You can see the problems and the opportunities,” said Banavar, who was previously at IBM’s lab in Boston and has, like several of his peers, returned to India to oversee operations.
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