Betting big on India

EMC, the $15-billion vendor of IT storage solutions and software, has been somewhat of a laggard in the Indian market. It started its centre of excellence here only in 2003, well after global peers had invested heavily and unveiled big-ticket India plans.

Now as the world tackles the recession, EMC has stepped on the gas. “India is among our three fastestgrowing markets globally,” David Goulden, CFO of EMC, said on a recent visit to India. The company’s India R&D centre develops compete solutions from here. The $400-million Indian storage market is expected to grow by 13 per cent annually till 2011.

“The problem we need to deal with is that storage requirements are growing by 50 per cent annually, even though IT budgets are growing by 10 per cent,” he says. The company plans to focus on small businesses to expand in India—where its business has grown five-fold in the past five years—and use its $1.5-billion investment to expand its revenues from the Asia Pacific market, which accounted for 13 per cent of its overall revenues in 2008.