McAfee to ramp up investment in India; add jobs

IT security firm McAfee is looking at adding more jobs at its centre in Bengaluru and will continue to invest in growing local business in India, a top official said today.

Global chipmaker Intel had last September spun out McAfee as a separate company with private equity player TPG owning 51% share in the new entity. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2017.

"One of our largest sites around the world is in Bangalore. We continue to invest in that. We are actually adding new functions into the site there," Intel Security General Manager and SVP Christopher Young told PTI.

"Under Intel, it was primarily development centre, but now we are adding finance, IT, HR to that site as well to support the new (unit)," he added.

While Young declined to comment on investment or specific number of jobs to be created, he said the new roles will be created "over the course of the year".

"India is one of our fastest growing markets. We have been growing in the double digits over the last several years and we expect to continue that trajectory and that is across public and private sector," he said.

India is "a really unique place" as apart from contributing to global development, there is a "healthy growing local market here", he added.

"We will continue to invest heavily into that duality," Young said. McAfee, which has been a part of Intel as Intel Security Group, had witnessed 20% year-on-year growth in 2016. It has close to 2,000 people in India with over 1,700 engineers.

"Revenues are growing double digits in India, so I expect that India over the next couple years could easily be one of our top markets," said Young, who will be the CEO of the new company.
Chipmaker Intel had acquired McAfee in 2011 for USD 7.7 billion to build security features directly into its silicon products.

The business had $1.1 billion in revenue in the first half of 2016, up 11% increase from the same period last year.