Consumer electronics giant pitches Chennai as research and development goldmine

Balaji Radhakrishnan, WW Systems Operations Manager, Logitech, tells us, “The Logitech Chennai centre started with five people primarily as a data entry point. From 2009 to 2017, our business group called Entertainment Control Group (ECG) went from 5 to 110 staff members.” 

The team has also evolved into taking care of the product development lifecycle, including the entire life cycle of the product Harmony that ECG develops. From embedded software to mobile apps, cloud tech, manufacturing support, product management, UI design, - from conceptualisation to shelf, except for the marketing aspect, ECG is in it all.

“The Harmony is something we are proud of, and we not only own it but sell it also to the global market,” he said. As a group, which makes consumer electronic devices, Logitech has about 5,00,000 customers for the Harmony, which was completely developed out of India and sold in Europe and the US. 

“We function as a single global team. Today, the offshore centres of many firms work on a needbased model. But, we are plugged into the global product development team. We were based out of the Elnet facility, near Tidel Park till 2017,” Radhakrishnan said. 

The move to Olympia Tech Park came about at the time when the IT team had also decided to consolidate the sales force, the CRM team, Oracle Financials, in Chennai. 

And the centre in Olympia came up at a cost of about $1 mn with 230 staff in total, with 110 in the ECG. Sumanta Datta, MD and Cluster Head, Logitech, mentioned that Chennai’s transformation into an IT services hub boded well for Logitech which is keen on expanding its footprint across both national and international markets every year. 

He tells us that one of the most promising businesses is that of the video collaboration solutions, which is changing the manner in which businesses and even law and order implementation is undertaken. 

The company’s stronghold in the input devices segment is also being boosted with its foray into regional language keyboards, and gaming and artistic-professional centric mice. Bluetooth speakers are also an area where the company is dedicating a lot of energy with outdoor variants being a big draw for the youth.