By Peter Marsh
Altran – a French company that is a world leader in hiring out engineers – is planning a big expansion in India to benefit from the growing globalisation of product development.
Philippe Salle, chief executive, said the company was looking to recruit about 1,700 engineers in India in the next few years to work on global projects for some of its big customers in fields from aerospace to life sciences.
Altran?s interest in putting down stronger roots in India – where it currently has only about 300 engineers who can be deployed on projects for customers – is also partly an effort to head off competition from India-based consultancies in information technology.
In recent years such businesses have been keen to expand into a broader range of engineering services, including product development. India-based IT consultancy specialists moving in this direction include Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, Infosys and HCL Technologies.
?A lot of our clients are expressing greater desire to base more of their international product development in India, and we want to be part of this trend,? Mr Salle told the FT in an interview.
Mr Salle said his goal was to lift the company?s revenues from India-based activities to ?at least? 100m euros in the next few years.
Paris-based Altran has a cadre of about 16,000 engineers – based mainly in Europe – who work on projects on behalf of customers.
The specialists can be brought in to work in specific research and development programmes so as to fill in gaps in its customers? fields of expertise or to work in areas where there are critical shortages of engineering staff. Among Altran?s customers are the European aerospace and defence group EADS and the Fiat and Renault carmakers.
Mr Salle said that demand in Europe for his company?s services in engineering was holding up fairly well, in spite of the economic traumas linked to the future of the euro.
?In spite of the economic problems a strong focus among many industrial companies is the need to differentiate themselves by bringing out innovative products or improving their industrial processes. So the need for deploying good quality engineering staff will remain fairly high,? Mr Salle said.
Mr Salle said he was also keen to expand Altran?s operations in China where currently the company has about 100 engineers. He wants this number to rise to ?between 500 and 1,000? by around 2016, the date by which he wants Altran?s India-based numbers to reach 2,000.
?More international companies are stepping up their [product development] work in India than is the case in China so I see India as being more of a priority,? Mr Salle said.
He also said India was an ?easier? place for global engineering-based businesses to work in than China, partly due to India?s high technical skills and a culture in which English is widely spoken among technology specialists.
Of Altran?s expected sales of 1.5bn euros this year, about 98 per cent is likely to come from Europe, with France responsible for almost half.
The company is also strong in Italy and Spain and has operations in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.
Apart from its activity in hiring out engineers Altran also owns Cambridge Consultants, a UK-based research and development specialist which works on individual products for customers using a group of in-house scientists and engineers.
Mr Salle described Cambridge Consultants as a ?jewel? and said he wanted in the next four years to see it double its revenues of some 60m euros in 2010 – partly by stepping up its presence in the US.
? The Financial Times Limited 2011