The Hindu : Business : Dow to make Chennai centre a design hub

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Thursday, Dec 18, 2008
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Dow to make Chennai centre a design hub

K. T. Jagannathan

Designs for overseas projects will be done here

To increase headcount in Chennai
Plans to set up beach-head in India

CHENNAI: Dow Chemicals International Pvt. Ltd., the Indian arm of the $54 billion U.S.-headquartered multinational company, is betting big on making the engineering support centre in Chennai into a design hub for Dow across the globe. Indicating this in an interaction with The Hindu here on Wednesday, Ramesh Ramachandran, President and CEO, said the headcount at the Chennai centre would go up to 1,000 by 2010 from around 200 now.

Mr. Ramachandran said Dow was not looking at India as a “low-cost transaction model”. It was, in fact, focussing on the huge chemical engineering talent pool in the country. Over a period, he expected the support centre here to emerge as a complete design solution provider for the entire Dow network. Most engineering companies used enterprise CAD (computer aided design). The big difference for Dow would be that it had 3D software from Integra. This would facilitate Dow to design reactors with the correct safety features. “This is a new tool in engineering design and Dow will be the first to put this into use,” he said. Dow had put this engineering investment into Chennai, so as to make it a centre of excellence, he said. The design for Dow projects in Saudi, Kuwait, the U.S. and Europe would be done out of the Chennai centre.

The President said that “work is not going away” because of the global meltdown. Dow globally would be spending $1.5-2 billion every year. That would require an additional talent pool of around 3,000-4,000, he said.

The company would focus on two major areas — water purification and energy-efficiency. Dow has reverse osmosis membrane technology. “We have put up three water stations in Gujarat, each costing Rs. 7-8 lakh,” he said. In the energy-efficiency space, it had initiated parleys with large builders to use its installations, which could bring about energy saving of around 25-30 per cent.

Mr. Ramachandran said Dow would be keen to set up a beach-head in India. But availability of power remained his primary concern. The President said Dow was hoping to improve its sales in India to Rs. 3,500 crore by 2010 from the present Rs. 2,500 crore.

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