Swiss major Logitech, a $2.4-billion provider of personal computer and mobile accessories, has consolidated its global IT operations and shifted them to Chennai.
From 2009-16, the Chennai centre was associated with Logitech’s single business group Entertainment Control Business Group (ECG) and developing Harmony range of remote controls.
However, today, in addition to developing products for the ECG group, Logitech’s global IT is supported from the city, said Balajee Rajaram, Director, Logitech Engineering and Designs India Pvt Ltd.
The company has spent around $1 million in a new R&D centre in Chennai with around 230 employees.
“We hope to support other groups, including music and gaming, from here, ” he said.
The Chennai centre does product development right from conceptualisation, hardware selection, building embedded software, mobile apps and cloud. Sumanta Datta, Managing Director, India, Logitech Electronics India, said Logitech has presence in five key sectors — ECG, music, gaming, creativity and productivity and video collaboration.
The Chennai centre will continue to design products for ECG and also provide IT support and development for all the five groups, he said.
“We are not developing for India but part of a global product team developing end-to-end,” he said, adding all the products are, however, imported from China.
Under ECG, the primary product is Harmony Elite, an universal remote sold at a base price of $349 in the US.
The Chennai centre is part of the entire conceptualisation to development of the produce, he said.
With a series of launches planned, India will be among the top 10 markets for Logitech by the year-end, he said.
Logitech launched a regional Hindi keyboard and hopes to expand to all regional languages soon.
“We would hope to do Tamil and Kannada and be part of the Digital India. This would be done out of the Chennai centre,” he said.