Microsoft to add 3,000 employees in India

Microsoft is planning to increase its ranks in India by 3,000 employees over the next three to four years, a company spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday.

The announcement was made by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates at an Indian industry forum earlier in the day in Delhi. Microsoft currently has 4,000 staff in India, and plans to increase that figure to 7,000 over the next three to four years, Gates said. It is not, however, clear whether the staff will be all employed by Microsoft or will also include staff at outsourcing companies in India that do work for Microsoft.

Gates is on a four-day visit to India which will include a visit to Bangalore, the country’s most prominent location for technology development and software services. Gates is also likely to visit Chennai in the Tamil Nadu state in south India, which is the home city of Dayanidhi Maran, the country’s communications and information technology minister. Maran has been promoting Chennai to multinational technology companies as a location for manufacturing and software development centers.

Microsoft, of Redmond, Washington, does product development at its India Development Center in Hyderabad. It also has a Global Development Center in the city, which is focused on software development for Microsoft’s own IS requirements.

Microsoft also has a support center in Bangalore called the Global Technology Support Center. The operation offers voice and e-mail based tech support to Microsoft’s customers. The company also outsources software development to local Indian companies.

In September, Microsoft announced a number of initiatives to support India’s efforts to bridge the digital divide, including support for nine Indian languages and English on its Windows XP Starter Edition, a low-cost, stripped down version of Windows XP.

As part of its agreement with the government to support the country’s initiatives to bridge the digital divide in the country, Microsoft also announced in September its plans to adopt 100 schools in six states in India to provide an interactive learning environment based on PCs and projectors in the classroom.

Microsoft’s earlier computer literacy initiative with the Indian federal and state governments, called Project Shiksha, focused on training teachers on the use of computers. Microsoft is also supporting a program of India’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to establish 100,000 rural kiosks, by offering a range of affordable products, services, consultancy, training and support.

Although it is under considerable pressure from organizations supporting open source software, the Indian federal government as well as state governments have declined to take a decision favoring either open source or proprietary software in education and e-governance projects.

However, earlier this year, the government began distributing a free CD containing productivity software in local languages, which includes open source software such as a Firefox browser and OpenOffice productivity suite.