McAfee looks to invest more in India and create jobs

Posted on March 14, 2017

The IT computer security giant, McAfee is looking to invest a lot more in India, especially at its branch in Bengaluru to create plenty of job opportunities in India, a top official of McAfee said on Monday (13/03/2017). This investment comes in the wake of growing demand for computer security software in India. This investment is expected to be completed by the end of the second quarter (Q2), this year. Read more on Investments

“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 said.

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

Mr. Young did not reveal details about how much McAfee plans to invest in India or how many jobs will be created as a result.

“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 sectors”, Mr. Young said.

“India is ‘a really unique place’ as apart from contributing to global development, there is a ‘healthy growing local market’ here. We will continue to invest heavily into that duality”, Mr. Young said.

McAfee, which is a part of Intel security group, has been witnessing an average growth rate of 20% per annum since 2015. McAfee has employed around 2000 people in its Bengaluru branch office out of which around 1700 are software 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.

Computer chip maker, Intel had acquired McAfee for US $7.7 billion in 2011 with the intention of building security features directly into its computer chips. The company’s revenue in 2016 stood at US $1.1 billion, a 11% increase from its revenue in 2015.

India has become an attractive destination to invest in for many companies all over the world due to its booming economy and recent tax exemptions among other benefits given by the BJP Government to foreign investors. A lot of American companies from A to Z have invested in India since January 2017. Some of them include Agro Tech, Cisco, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Ford, Intel, JP Morgan, Oracle, PepsiCo and UPS India. All these companies have invested billions of US dollars in recent months to develop new and innovative products or services. For example, Coca Cola is going to setup new plants in MP to produce ‘coconut water’. It is heartening to see the rate of investments in India go up in the recent few months. Indian companies must also look to invest in other countries like China and Japan and not overly rely on countries like US and UK because the sense of ‘protectionism’ is growing in these countries and Indian businesses are not doing as well as they used to in these countries. The rate of their growth has declined over the last few years. Read more on Startup News