The new Harman India Development Centre will operate from Wipro’s existing Bangalore and Chennai facilities, complementing an earlier agreement which outsourced Harman’s global IT infrastructure services at Wipro. Beginning with manpower of 250 employees, the centre plans to ramp up headcount to 1000 by year 2011. Services delivered will include both software development and related hardware engineering for Harman’s portfolio. Harman will retain ownership of all intellectual property developed in the centre. Harman designs, manufactures and markets wide range of audio and infotainment products for the automative, consumer and professional markets.

Briefing reporters Wipro  Joint Chief Executive Officer (IT Business) Suresh Vaswani said, “This is a relationship about co-development and bringing in a partner who will play a part in the value chain. This is a partnership about collaborative innovation.”

Harman Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Dinesh C Paliwal said, “Wipro’s proven development and project management expertise will complement our company’s core audio and infotainment skills to deliver innovative customer solutions.”