Posted on 03/20/2006 7:22:45 AM PST by CarrotAndStick
The No. 1 computer maker in the world will double headcount in India in the next three years.
Dell CEO Michael Dell said Monday the company would employ 20,000 people in India in the next three years, doubling the current headcount of 10,000.
A small portion of the new employees, or about 300, will be on the R&D team, doubling the current 300-strong division. They will be based in Bangalore, designing and finding solutions for servers and storage equipment.
“We found that the R&D team was designing patentable stuff, so we decided to extend their scope from just software to hardware too,” said Mr. Dell at a press conference in Bangalore. He said the India center had filed for 145 invention disclosures last year.
Dell has four contact centers in India and is in the process of building its own campuses in various locations.
The Round Rock, Texas-based company also plans to set up a manufacturing plant for PCs in India and is in talks with several state governments, negotiating incentives and infrastructure guarantees.
Focusing on Enterprise
In India, Dell’s PC and server sales are concentrated on the enterprise customer.
“Except in the U.S., only 15 percent of our revenues come from consumers,” said Mr. Dell. “Our focus will continue to be on the enterprise in India.”
That may change once the manufacturing facility is built, he added. It will enable Dell to cater to customers at all price points, not just those wanting bare-bones computers.
Mr. Dell declined to discuss profitability, and at a gathering of CEOs also refused to be drawn into a debate about Lenovo, Dell’s new rival.
“We manufacture in China as well,” was all he would say.
PC sales in India have traditionally been slow, with consumers reluctant to buy machines that cost more than $1,500. But a spate of low-cost PCs from local manufacturers hit the market in 2005, pushing sales to about 5 million units, up from less than 3 million in the previous year.
“In every market in India, you see the hockey-stick effect,” said Vinay Deshpande, chief executive of Encore Software, the Indian company that makes a version of the low-cost handheld Simputer. “Once you cross the downward curve, sales rise exponentially. The PC market will witness explosive growth in the coming years.”
Dell is no doubt aware of this and is getting ready to ride the upswing.
"PC sales in India have traditionally been slow, with consumers reluctant to buy machines that cost more than $1,500. But a spate of low-cost PCs from local manufacturers hit the market in 2005, pushing sales to about 5 million units"
"Dell CEO Michael Dell said Monday the company would employ 20,000 people in India in the next three years, doubling the current headcount of 10,000"
At current levels of 10,000 employees and 5 million units sold in India, that would be 500 computers per year per employee, which is less than two per day per employee. They must work for peanuts and curry.
My contact with Dell customer service late last year was frustrating and disappointing.
I suspect all my phone calls were handled in India, although the CSRs always gave me names such as Mary or Ken.
After formatting the HD and reconfiguring the RAID, I haven't had any problems, though.
Great!!! as long as they do not try to talk to us on the phone. I ALWAYS try hard to unerdstand an ESL person, but business is business and if I cannot understand, I request a person more fluent in ENGLISH. If they cannot accomodate, I call back later.
Just like car manufacturers, such companies do not exist. Look where the motherboards are made, LCD screens, etc. If one merely assembles a PC here --- you can do it in your garage --- does that make the company American?
And, conversely, if Ford owns Jaguar, which is fully assembled in England, does that make those cars American for you? IBM had locations around the world for decades. So did many other companies like Exxon and DuPont. There is nothing new about outsourcing except for one aspect: people, even conservative like you, now fell for socialist, anti-corporate propaganda of the media. Until recently, they knew better.
You want to strengthen America? Tell your neighbor to spend more time talking to his family, rather than watching TV, and take a course at night rather than buying home theater system. Protectionism does not help.
It's not cost effective to build the computers there, and ship them here. By the time that they arrived (6 month+ turnaround on goods shipped from the FarEast), they'd be out of date. That, and inventory prices would absolutely kill them. Most of the Dell factories that I've seen work on less than a 72 hour parts float - that knowledge is old, it may be less than that now.
All of the Dell Stuff that I put in, in America, is made in America as far as I know. I just put in some equipment in the UK, and it was manufactured in Ireland.
IBM's planning on hiring another 20,000 in India also.
Too late for that, if you pull the case on your Dell and look close you will find few if any of the parts made in the USA. The manufacture of computer parts moved to Asia years ago I don't know of any American company that still makes PC parts other than those of a custom nature. There are many factories in Asia that produce many varieties of hard drives C D players burners, and etc. according to specifications required by the brand.
I assemble them at the kitchen table. You can really do it cheap if you take advantage of all the rebates and stay one year behind in technology. Bare-bones reign!!!
Hey Mikey, how 'bout hiring some Indians that speak English well enough that I can converse with them when I call about my Dell?And, while you're at it, how 'bout training those ESL folks so they know more about my Dell than I do?
Dell support from India: serving as the best world-wide example of "Customer No Service*".
Copyright 2005, Clark Howard
They are paid about 20% of what it would cost to pay an American but it is still more pay than many of their parents make. These jobs are highly competitive as well with thousands of qualified applicants for each position. For a young, college educated Indian, landing an "outsourced" job with an American company is akin to winning the lottery.
True, but we are losing our competitive edge and we need to work to regain it. In the long run, outsourcing low-skilled data entry and customer service jobs will free up the American workforce to perform higher-skilled tasks (as long as we continue to churn out an educated population). I know this is of little comfort to the customer service rep in Nebraska who just saw "Singh" in Bangalore take his job, but it still holds true.
America does best when we are challenged (remember Japanese automakers?) and we are being challenged now by a hungry, motivated and increasingly educated workforce in India.
Me too! They give canned b.s. answers and try to convince their name is "James Johnson" or some garbage.
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