Aveva bets big on smart cities, airports as it looks to double growth in India

Aveva, a global leader in engineering and industrial software, is betting big on smart cities and smart airports as it looks to double its growth in India, which is also home to its largest research and development facility in the world. After being part of India`s first Integrated Greenfield Smart City, Naya Raipur, the British multinational is working on Namchi Smart City in Sikkim with a consortium which includes its sister concern Schneider Electric, the global leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation. "We will be hoping to announce another four-five smart cities in next six months," said Navtej Garewal, Aveva`s India head, while announcing expansion of the company`s facility at Waverock in Hyderabad.

He said the company was also keen in smart airports area, especially with the sector attracting investments. Aveva is working with Schneider Electric to bid for the integrated command and control centre at the second terminal at Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru. "The tenders may be called this fiscal. We are hoping to bag it," he said, adding the company was actively a part of `Digital India` journey. He also revealed that the Indian Navy was using its solutions for indigenously-designed frigates.

Aveva is growing in India at 30 per cent, with the acceleration provided by sectors like smart cities, food processing and oil and gas industry. Aveva, which has 5.5 billion pound market capitalisation, gets five per cent of its revenues from India operations and it is looking to double this in five years. It doubled the office space to 120,000 square feet at Hyderabad centre, making it the largest R&D facility globally. With a headcount of over 700 just in R&D, Aveva`s facility here is contributing to 45 per cent of the company`s global R&D services and solutions delivery.

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"If you look at India base, it has now become super hub of global operations. Our largest capacity in software R&D is here and largest capacity in software solutions delivery and system integration is out of India. It has become a strategically important base of operations," said Ravi Gopinath, Chief Operating Officer, Aveva.

Hyderabad facility now has over 1,000 employees including 300 research and development engineers from Cognizant, a strategic partner of Aveva. The company plans to recruit another 200 people over next 18 months. Aveva also plans to add a new global services hub at its Hyderabad facility which will have the capacity to accommodate 400 people. The company in India currently has 1,320 employees including 1,120 in R&D and solution delivery while the global headcount stands at 4,600. This includes 1,700 in R&D at over 10 R&D centres.

Besides Hyderabad, the company has some R&D employees in Bengaluru while its marketing offices are spread across Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Pune. Over last six years, it invested over 200 million pounds in just R&D operations in India. The company officials said Aveva`s cutting-edge software solutions make assets and operations safer, more effective, and more sustainable. With over 16,000 customers and two million software licenses at over 100,000 sites in 130 countries, Aveva claims to be the world`s most trusted and agile software innovator.

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A market leader in engineering, asset performance, operations management and control applications, its installed base connects over 20 billion device points, executes over 4.4 trillion industrial transactions daily and stores over 12 petabytes of data annually, the company said.