SanDisk to hire 600 in Bengaluru

BENGALURU: Storage solutions major SanDisk is doubling its headcount in Bengaluru to 1,200 people in the next three years from the existing 600 making it the second-largest R&D centre outside the US. The Fortune 500 company is looking to hire people in key areas like system design, firmware, software and hardware.

The India centre has been instrumental in designing many consumer products including the 200GB microSD card, the highest capacity card that can hold 20 hours of full HD video on a fingernail sized memory card. "India has been a key player in SanDisk's global growth strategy. The availability of world class talent, emerging infrastructure and growing market demand makes it a conducive market for expansion. The new R&D centre set up here is a testament to our ongoing commitment towards India," Guruswamy Ganesh, VP - corporate engineering in SanDiskIndia.

SanDisk started its India operations in 2006 with 75 employees. The storage solutions major gets 33% of its revenue from its retail business and 67% of its business from OEMs and enterprises. Sandisk is the largest provider of flash memory storage solutions that includes removable memory cards in cameras and embedded memory in smartphones that includes solid state drives, SD cards, microSD cards and memory stick and card readers. It has a host of enterprise storage offers including memory solutions in cloud storage data centres.Today, the India centre has designed and development a majority of the consumer products whose sales contributes $2 bilion to the company's overall revenues.

Vivek Tyagi, director- business development in SanDisk India, said,"In today's volatile economic environment, companies want more IT support for their operations while their IT budgets are shrinking year-over-year. The performance and agility that flash storage brings to the table makes it a game-changer." The India centre has over 20 patents to its credit.