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AOL Time Warner Inc. to Set up Netscape Office in India
AOL Time Warner Inc., one of the largest media and Internet conglomerates in the world, will invest about 100 million U.S. dollars in India's high-tech industry over the next five years in a bid to expand its business worldwide.
AOL's new investment program, which is to be carried out in India's high-tech center of Bangalore, has already been approved by the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
Under the plan, AOL will open a Netscape office in Bangalore and hire dozens of engineers to develop e-commerce services and software targeted at corporate markets, the newspaper said.
AOL, the No.1 Internet access provider in the United States with about 30 million domestic subscribers, has been stepping up its efforts to penetrate markets throughout Europe, Latin America and Asia. Last year, the company gained 2 million subscribers outside of the United States.
Last June, AOL started its first foray into India, one of the largest Internet markets to be tapped in the world, by announcing a deal to distribute a co-branded version of AOL Instant Messenger to customers of Satyam Infoway Ltd., India's leading private Internet access provider with more than 160,000 subscribers, the Washington Post said.
AOL is the latest one among the world-class high-tech businesses that have been trying hard to out-source their work to India. With an eye on its talent pools and cheap labor, about two- thirds of Fortune 500 companies have begun to look for computer- related investments in India in the past five years or so, according to the Indian Embassy in Washington.
India is now lagging behind in Internet use, since only two out of every 1,000 people have a telephone in the country. Still, cyber industry in the country is growing rapidly, especially in the urban areas, as more and more middle-class people get hooked up to the Internet.
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