Cardiac Science of Bothell, Washington  has agreed to be acquired for $2.30 per share by a medical equipment company based in Bangalore, India. The all-cash deal represents a 10 percent premium to Monday’s closing price of Cardiac Science shares, the companies said Tuesday.

Opto Circuits (India) Limited of Bangalore, which will pay $54.6 million for Cardiac Science, is a developer and marketer of healthcare equipment including pulse oximeters, patient monitoring systems, sensors, digital thermometers, anesthesia and respiratory care equipment, and stents. It reported revenues of $243 million in the latest fiscal year, and sells primarily in the US, Europe and South East Asia. Opto Circuits will fund the purchase through cash on hand and lines of credit.

Opto Circuits Chairman and Managing Director Vinod Ramnani said the deal helps his company venture into the noninvasive diagnostic monitoring and “high-growth” automated external-defibrillation markets.  “This transaction is expected to open many new global markets for Cardiac Science’s products and will greatly enhance Opto Circuits’ product offering and presence in the United States,” Ramnani asserted.

While companies from India are getting ambitious about M&A in the West, they continue to be value-seekers as we see in this deal to buy a distressed medical device company. Earlier this year, the company agreed to replace 24,000 AEDs for U.S. medical facilities and emergency services under a revised recall plan the company has negotiated with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.  So don’t expect a wave of such buyouts in the next quarter.

Microsoft India, which currently has an offshore  product development center in Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, announced the expansion of its activities further south to Bangalore in Karnataka, to focus on product development and applied research in web search and online ad technologies. “It will initially have 200  employees according to Satya Nadella, senior vice president, R& D, Online Services Division, Microsoft (MS-OSD). “The Bangalore location  joins Hyderabad as one of the core hubs of development and research for MS-OSD. The innovations from our Hyderabad team are already having significant impact on our US, UK, Canada, Australia,and India products.

Microsoft India R&D MD Srini Koppolu said that the Hyderabad team had been contributing in terms af adding core algorithm relevance, developing structured data and building page search advertising technology.

Takeaway: Companies who reach a certain degree of R&D maturity at one location in India, can start to branch out to other cities, to secure specific local talent which may prefer to live in a particular location. Expanding too widely too soon can cause serious challenges to most foreign entitites

German software company SAP, AG started a co-innovation lab ( COIL) in Bangalore  in April 2009, to collaborate with technology, service and software companies to develop new solutions. It is the third such location after Palo Alto, California and Tokyo, Japan and already employs 4,200 people.

By 2010,  COIL  completed 24 projects and produced 14 solutions ready to go to market, according to Axel Henning Saleck, head of the global SAP co-innovation lab network. Saleck said SAP has partnered with 11 technology companies including Wipro, Cisco, Arteria Technologies, MindTree and others to help take ideas from the concept to development and eventually will take them to market.

The lab hosts a heterogeneous data center, integrating hardware and infrastructure software, a hands-on environment where members can work on proof-of-concepts and build and test new business processes. The promotes applications and technology solutions to SAP customers. For example, the  Real Estate Sales and Tenancy business, typically in emerging markets, is largely a manual process with system interactions pushed more as a back-end activity. MindTree Ltd, a regional SAP Service partner, with expertise in implementations of SAP Real Estate solutions has worked in COIL to build a mobile application that automates sales and leasing for real estate.

Austin, Texas based National Instruments is making  India one of its key R&D centers, with a 40 per cent increase in investments in its Bangalore facility.

Phil Hester, Senior Vice President of R&D said, “The India R&D center is one of the strategic growth areas for National Instruments. We plan for it to become our center of excellence in R&D, with a focus on innovation, value creation and enhancing our intellectual property.”

The new facility will also focus on filing patents in the field of Motion Control algorithms, RF and software development. The India team has already received  7 patents for innovations in the area of Motion Control algorithms, RF and software development. Algorithm development and Software Test will be key areas of growth for R&D in Bangalore.

Telecom equipment maker ZTE, one of the bigger players in the global 3G space, with $9 billion in global sales, is ready to invest $100 million into its Indian subsidiary, ZTE India.

The funds are expected to come to ZTE’s Value Added Services Software Development Center in Bangalore which houses 140 technical staff and is integrated with ZTE’s global R&D network. ZTE employs 3,500 in India, distributed across Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata.