Barco to make India its global innovation, R&D hub

Visual technology firm Barco on Wednesday said it is working to make India its global innovation hub.

Barco India Managing Director Rajiv Bhalla announced setting up of the company's biggest global software research and development (R&D) centre in Noida spread over an area of 51,500 sq ft.

"India has one of the most talented pools of engineers. We need to provide them with good infrastructure and work environment to attract them. That is one of the reasons for setting up new R&D and software hub," Bhalla said.

Barco India has a headcount of 550 people. Out of that, 160 are engaged in R&D.

"Barco is working towards making India its global innovation and R&D hub. Equipped with a state-of-the-art facility to cater to cutting-edge research across verticals. More than 60-70 per cent of global software development takes place out of India," Bhalla said.

He added that the company increased the R&D team size in 2020 also.

"We now have 160 people in R&D. We plan to hire 20-40 engineers every year," Bhalla said.

He also said the India team size increased even though the company's business was impacted due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Most of the company's business comes from the entertainment vertical and it was badly hit with closure of cinema halls.

The company supplies high-tech visual screens to cinema halls and mission-critical projects for offices that need command and control centre, among others.

Bhalla said demand started coming back in third and fourth quarters.

"We have done even better in the first quarter," Bhalla said.

He said the company will continue to focus on building solid software talent at its R&D team, internally called 'globally empowered to accelerate experiences' (GEAX) in India, as a growth engine for innovation globally.

"GEAX team in India is poised to play an instrumental role in enabling hybrid solutions in entertainment, enterprise and healthcare," Bhalla said.