French firm Altran expanding India operations

Bangalore, April 26 (IANS) French major Altran Technologies is expanding its operations in India to tap the domestic market and serve its global customers in aerospace, automotive, railways and energy verticals, a senior company official said Thursday.

"We are looking at organic and inorganic routes to scale up our Indian subsidiary operations to a 2,000 workforce by 2014 from about 300 currently," Altran group chief technical officer Michel Bailly told reporters here.

The euro 1.4-billion ($1.9 billion) global leader in innovation and high-tech engineering consulting supports companies worldwide in the development of products and services in diverse verticals.

"We are in talks with a couple of Indian manufacturing firms for strategic acquisitions and ramping up our operations in aerospace and automotive sectors. Our game plan is to grow 40 percent organically and 60 percent inorganically in the twin sectors in India, which has emerged as a key market for our global business," Bailly said.

With India selecting the French medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) Rafale to replace the Indian Air Force's (IAF) ageing MiG-21 fleet, Altran is eyeing major contracts from the 50 percent offset clause built into the multi-billion dollar deal for 126 fighters from the French aerospace major Dassault Aviation.

"To capitalise on the emerging offset opportunities, we are setting up a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bangalore for innovation in mechanical engineering, embedded and critical systems and product lifecycle management for our aerospace business with about 1,000 engineers," Bailly asserted.

The proposed CoE will be collaborating with the parent company's similar centres in France, Spain, Germany and Italy across Europe to reduce cycle time for innovation in aerospace and automotive.

"We are also keen on setting up aerospace joint ventures with the stipulated 26 percent equity holding to manufacture a range of subsystems, components and accessories for global aerospace firms operating in the Indian sub-continent," Bailly noted.

As part of its global accounts, the company is engaged in India in partnership with Airbus, Alstom Transportation and Renault.

"With offset clause requirements as mandated by the Indian government in defence deals under the defence procurement contracts, we see a huge opportunity in the defence and aerospace sectors," Altran India chief executive Sanjay Kumar said on the occasion.

As an international group, Altran operates in over 20 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas with about 17,000 employees.