GECC to double manpower

Chennai, with its large pool of talented engineers, is emerging as a global player in Siemens’ growing businesses and is set to develop applications for future solutions.

Underlining this at the Singapore International Energy Week, Elangovan Karuppiah, Executive Vice President of Siemens Pte Ltd, appreciated the support of large talent pool in the southern Indian state capital city from where Siemens is building businesses and services covering graphics, engineering and software applications for the futures.

Siemens’ Graphics & Engineering Center of Competence (GECC) in Chennai is to double manpower to 200 engineers over the next one-two years and develop applications for the global market, he said on 29 Oct 2019.

Siemens is also building the business from Chennai of recent acquisition, a Silicon Valley startup, Enlightened Inc, co-locating with GECC as the two entities have synergy to offer services globally, said Karuppiah.

GECC Chennai will add talented people as business expands, growing from the current manpower of 85 people to over 100 by end of this year and 200 in the next one to two years, he said.

GECC was started as a second support to the main centre in Sofia, Bulgaria, about 10 years ago but became an independent entity within the group in 2011 catering to the Asia Pacific and Middle East.

Growth has been rapid over the past three years with Siemens US centres off-loading engineering work to Chennai. The US operation started offloading graphic and engineering work to GECC Chennai for competitive reasons about three years ago.

“Today, Chennai GECC is working 50% for US and 50% the Asia Pacific-Middle East,” said Karuppiah of the centre that began modestly with a 15-man team.

The Chennai team is now providing graphics and engineering services for building automation systems for the Middle East, Asia Pacific and the US regions.

“This is very highly efficient and smooth organization. They are reinventing themselves continuously such as providing validation services for the pharma industry,” he explained.

“Today the team is going beyond that … validation pharmaceutical standards according to FDA of the US. We plan to come out with applications as well such as digitalization related apps for use in the future,” he said of the GECC Chennai potential.

The acquisition of Enlighted, a leading provider of smart IoT (Internet of Things) systems in buildings, was recently completed by Siemens Building Technologies Division.

It is making progress from its new home in Chennai, parallel to the progress of the centre in Silicon Valley, said Karuppiah, describing Enlighted a young startup that fits into Siemens development of future technologies.

The Enlightened research activities are undertaken by a manpower of 55 involving the latest IoT sensors for the global markets. fiinews.com