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.

"It's certainly not a conventional outsourcing deal, and a time and material contract. This deal is a manifestation of our positioning of the product engineering services as a business line for us. We are going to be an extended engineering services organization for Harman which will leverage the R&D engineering services expertise to reduce time to market for new products and come out with innovative solutions committed to its automotive customers globally. The center will act as an extended engineering services organization of Harman and we will jointly develop technologies relating to speech recognition and accident reduction, among others," Vaswani said. Wipro's R&D division employs over 18,000 people and last year it contributed to about 30 percent of the IT firm's topline.

"Wipro's commitment to its innovation agenda will enable us to collaborate with Harman to localize, improve speed to market, create new avenues for business and help our partner maintain a competitive edge," said Azim Premji, Chairman, Wipro, commenting on the occasion.

ABOUT HARMAN INTERNATIONAL INDUSTRIES

The $4.1billion NYSE-listed Harman International Industries Inc. designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of audio and infotainment products for the automotive, consumer and professional markets. The company, whose portfolio spans some 15 leading brands, including Kardon, JBL and Infinity, maintains a strong presence in the Americas, Europe and Asia, and employs more than 12,000 people worldwide.