Nokia Says India a Top Growth Market; Stresses Its Focus on Country

Bullish on India, Nokia is ramping up its operations in the country, focusing on its three businesses of network infrastructure, location intelligence and advanced technologies, top executives of the Finnish telecom and IT conglomerate said.

"For us, India is one of Nokia's top 10 high-growth regions. The manufacturing operations, global delivery centers and research and development setups in India reflect Nokia Networks' unwavering focus on the country and enhanced proximity to its customers," Barry French, Executive Vice President, Marketing, Communications and Corporate Affairs, Nokia, said.

"India is our largest country of employment. As a company, we are huge in India," French told PTI at Nokia's headquarters on the outskirts of the Finnish capital, Helsinki.

"It is a great operation. We absolutely manufacture in India and we are always looking for opportunities to grow our manufacturing presence. We manufacture for the domestic and export market. This is another example of 'Make in India'," he said.

"We have a history and depth in India that are very hard to match. If you look at 16,000 direct and indirect employees in the country. We have manufacturing, R&D, sales, global service centres in India," he added.

With the closure of transaction to sell Device & Services business to Microsoft at end April 2014, Nokia is a newly energised company focused on building technologies for a connected world, he said on the reinvented Nokia's ambitions plans in India as well as globally.

"We have everything there (in India), so we have a depth and a kind of presence that others find very hard to match," French said.

Nokia has Global Delivery Center (GDC) in Noida near Delhi and Chennai, India's largest telecom manufacturing facility, and Research and Development center in Bangalore.

"Our global services hub, end user service quality focused Service Management Capability Center and a Centralised Solution Support Center (CSSC) are also based in India," Sandeep Girotra, Vice President and Head of India Region, said.

Regional Customer Operations close to one-third of India's mobile subscribers are carried by networks supplied, installed and managed by Nokia for telecom operators in India.

Ten Indian telecom operators, both public and private are Nokia's customers, he said.

Nokia is one of the leading telecom equipment manufacturing companies in India, he said.

"Our manufacturing plant in Chennai, spread over 140,000 square metres makes and ships the complete gamut of telecom products (2G, 3G, LTE and Core Networks) for domestic and global markets," Girotra said.

He underlined that Nokia's commitment to India is deeply engraved in the way the company has harnessed the potential of local talent for research and development.

"Our Bangalore Technology Center is one of the four main global R&D site for the company, employing over 3,000 engineers and undertaking research on various advanced global telecommunication technologies like WCDMA, Small Cells, CDMA, Radio Platforms, LTE, Operational Support Systems, Voice & IP Transformation and Packet Core.

"We were a pioneer in setting up Global Delivery Centers and Global Network Operations Centers (GNOC) in Chennai and Noida. These centers, today employs over 4,000 highly skilled employees who operate, manage, monitor and upgrade networks of telecom operators located in 86 countries around the world.

"Our centers in India service over 400 operators around the world for various projects and run networks, remotely, that carry over 200 million global subscribers," Girotra said.

In addition, Nokia has recently created a showcase center for monitoring and managing mobile internet service quality called Service Management Capability Center in Noida, the only vendor to do so, he said.

HERE, a Nokia company is a leader in navigation, mapping and location experiences. The company combines highly accurate and fresh maps with cloud technology to enable rich, real-time location experiences in a broad range of connected devices - from smartphones and tablets to wearable and vehicles.

HERE has nearly 1,700 employees in India spanning seven cities of Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi and Pune.

These sites' main operations are focused on R&D, sales and our global production operations.

Expansion is currently underway for HERE in India, specifically in Mumbai where hundreds of additional geo-coders will be hired by the end of 2014, Nokia officials said.

Of the 1,700 people employed in India for HERE, about 1,300 of them are direct employees of the company while 400 are independent contractors, they said.

The third business unit, Nokia Technologies is engaged in developing and licensing cutting-edge innovations that are powering the next revolution in computing and mobility.

Through Nokia Technologies, Nokia will invest in the further development of its industry-leading innovation portfolio.

This will include expanding our successful IP licensing programme, helping other companies and organisations benefit from our breakthrough innovations, and exploring new technologies for use in potential future products and services, Nokia officials said.