Wipro, Harman International to develop audio and infotainment solutions in India

Harman India Development Center will operate from Wipro Technologies' existing research and development (R&D) facilities in Bangalore and Chennai, the companies said in a statement.

The center complements "an earlier agreement which outsourced Harman's global IT infrastructure services to Wipro," the statement said.

The center will initially house 250 employees and gradually increase to 1000 by 2011. The endeavor will significantly strengthen Harman's "global engineering capabilities," it said.

According to the terms of the agreement, Wipro will provide R&D services and develop audio and infotainment solutions across the automotive, consumer, and professional markets.

"Services delivered from the center will include both software development and related hardware engineering for Harman's portfolio. Harman will retain ownership of all intellectual property developed in the center," the statement said.

"This new venture in India is an important milestone for enriching our portfolio of cutting-edge engineering solutions. We will expedite the joint development of IP (intellectual property) through this partnership," said Dinesh C. Paliwal, Chairman and CEO of $4.1 billion Harman International Industries. "Wipro's proven development and project management expertise will complement our company's core audio and infotainment skills to deliver innovative customer solutions and make us more competitive. This expanded capability and capacity will also position Harman to better serve large emerging market opportunities in Asia."

"The new venture in India is an important milestone for enriching our portfolio of engineering solutions. We have $14 billion worth of business backlog till the end of last fiscal. Many of the projects we are working on in the joint engineering center, will cater to the backlogs, and the scope of the center will keep on growing with the demand from our customers," Paliwal said.

Harman carries out a major part of its R&D work in its development centers in Germany, Canada and the US. It also employs around 1100 people in China who mainly design its products.

"Wipro's advances in IT and embedded engineering have enabled us to provide high-end solutions to our customers and we are pleased to support Harman's global leadership in premium audio and infotainment," said Suresh Vaswani, Joint CEO, IT Business and Executive Director, Wipro Limited.