Covidien , Inc. a US-based manufacturer of medical devices and pharmaceuticals, and an Amritt client, has set up its first research and development center in Hyderabad, India. Business Line reported.

Randell Frazier inagurates Covidien India R&D Center, Rob Frechette, Anurag Asthana, Arjun Sarker in photo from left

“The Indian healthcare devices market is part of our focus on emerging markets. The Hyderabad center will enable us to improve product time to market and create valued-innovation,”  according to Robert Frechette, Vice-President (Engineering Services).

Stating that the company had over 14,000 patents worldwide, with another 12,000 patent applications pending, Frechette told the  Business Standard that  idea to set up an R&D center in India was primarily to support the company’s entire operations globally. Besides generating ideas from here, filing global patents from here was also on the cards, he said.

“We currently spend 5 per cent of our revenues on R&D, which we plan to increase to about 6 per cent starting this year,” he said, adding that the company had so far launched over 100 new products and expected to launch more than 50 products over the next two years.

Apart from designing products to suit local market needs, the R&D unit would utilise India’s huge talent pool to provide a range of engineering services for the company’s medical products business. The company plans to hire over 350 professionals for the centre over the next two years. Some 30 people are already working at the 40,000-square-foot facility.

Mr Arjun Sarker, Managing Director — Indian sub-continent, Covidien, said the business focus in India would be on surgical solutions and medical devices, though the company is strong in the pharmaceuticals business too.

Former Congressman Dr. Tim Roemer is returning to the USA from his two years as the US Ambassador to India. Replacing him in New Delhi will be Los Angeles native and bow-tie wearing Dr. A. Peter Burleigh.  A distinguished career U.S. Foreign Service officer who served as Ambassador and Deputy Representative of the United States to the United Nations before he retired after 33 years of service in August 2000, Burleigh needs to be approved by the Senate.  Prior to his U.N. post, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Republic of Maldives (1995-1997).

Dr. Peter Burleigh, new US Ambassador-designate

Ambassador Burleigh held a number of senior positions at the State Department and served in United States embassies in Nepal, Bahrain, and India, as well as Sri Lanka.

Ambassador Burleigh received his undergraduate degree from Colgate University, served in the Peace Corps (1963-1965) in Nepal, doing community development work in the far west of that country, and spent a year on a Fulbright scholarship in Nepal.  Ambassador Burleigh speaks Bengali and Hindi. He is the first US Ambassador to India to be fluent in the language.  He lived Fort Lauderdale, Florida for a number of years and  served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Miami. He is also one of the first open gay members of the US diplomatic corps; some in India may find that controversial in a country that technically outlaws homosexuality, based on Victorian British era laws. Burleigh was posted in New Delhi from April to July 2009 as charge d’affairs in the US Embassy New Delhi.

At Osmania University, Hyderabad, India in 2009

What this means

The first US ambassador to have considerable South Asia experience and certainly the first to speak Hindi will be an asset. But some may argue that his lack of recent prominence means that India is fading in importance to the Obama administration. I am reluctant to draw that conclusion, let us give Amb Burleigh a few months to engage in his role and then judge how it goes.

Colorado-based subway sandwich chain Quiznos says it expects to open its first outlet in India in the summer. The chain has a deal with Hyderabad-based businessman Arjun Valluri and intends to build up 20 locations by 2014.  Subway Sandwich has a significant presence in many cities in India already.

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