Bangalore: Taiwan-based technology firm Winstron Group is exploring options to set up a manufacturing base in India, a top official said today (Apr 10, 2004).

The $ 3.9 billion Winstron focused on technology products to the OEM market across the world is increasing its presence in the country, besides outsourcing software for its next generation products.

"We are studying the business environment to set up manufacturing facilities in India," Abextek Global Inc president Alex Kuo said.

Abextek, one of the several subsidiaries of Winstron Group has an Indian unit, XSERVE India Pvt Ltd, based out of Bangalore, which markets the firm's products in the country.

Xserve India Managing Director Rahul Gupta said the firm had geared up to manufacture set top boxes in India, but had to put on hold the plans due to the non implementation of the Conditional Access System (CAS).

Xserve, he said, had imported about 45,000 units and had planned to locally produce if the volumes increased.

Gupta said the firm is assembling digital video recorders for intrusion detection on a small scale at its unit.

Alex said, Winstron's next generation hand held MPEG player, which can play, record and down load movies had software sourced from several IT firms in India.

"It has a three way collaboration. From the market that is US, our inputs in Taiwan and software from India," he said.