Friday, April 29 2005 15:43 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: World's largest PC maker Dell today (Apr 29, 2005) said it would add nearly 3,000 people in India this year (2005) to reach a total workforce of 10,000 and plans to build new centres.

Dell has opened similar centres at Hyderabad and Chandigarh.

Dell also has its global product group that focuses on building software, storage testing and enterprise system test and a global software development centre that does IT application work for Dell internally.

Rollins said Dell is expanding both its Hyderabad and Bangalore centres, while it is scouting for new set up units in other cities in India.

Dell officials did not disclose investment details.

Dell is aiming to transform itself from being a PC maker to an IT systems company, Rollins said.

He said the $ 49.2 billion Dell has reset its business target to achieve revenue of $ 80 billion in three to four years, as against the earlier target of $ 60 billion in five years.

Rollins said about 55 per cent of the growth expected in the $ 80 billion projections will be from non-US markets.

"Asia, China, emerging India, Japan, all of Europe...these will be the high growth markets, while US continues to be a market for us," he said.

Asked about the impact of shifting some call centre work from India to the US, Dell Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) president Paul Bell said, "there were issues which needed better maturity and expertise to handle, as it was a centre with lot of youngsters, we thought it appropriate to shift it. Now the maturity level in India has increased."

Rollins dismissed as "waning" reports against outsourcing to India citing the Dell incident. "I think that particular controversy is waning. The people here have capabilities and maturity to handle such work."

Bell said the India centre was ranked as the best in customer service among all of Dell centres in the world for European operations.