Software giant Microsoft will invest 1.7 billion US dollar in India and nearly double its workforce through 3,000 new jobs over the next four years, as it plans to make the country a major hub for its research and product development.

"Half of this investment will go for next phase of expansion of existing infrastructure for R&D, product and applications development, services and technical support for both global and domestic industry", Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said on December 7.

The investment will also go towards setting up offices in 33 cities for enhanced market penetration as well as addition of 700 retail outlets.

In 2002, the company had announced a 400 million dollar investment in the country.

Gates also announced increasing the headcount for India by 3,000 to 7,000 over the next four years.

"We depend on India for manpower that is why we are scaling up operations here. We have 4,000 people today and we will be 7,000 over the next three to four years. We are hiring as fast as possible", he said, adding that the percentage increase in employees would be the highest in India.

"In the next phase, we will also expand our reach across the country and work with system integrators, independent software vendors and the developer community to develop solutions and services which will enable the growth of Indian IT market", Ravi Venkatesan, chairman, Microsoft India, said. India has 6.5 lakh developers.

Cisco Systems Inc said in October that it plans to spend USD 1.1 billion in India over the next three years. Gates said the company's efforts in India were aimed at narrowing the digital divide by creating products that are not only affordable for the poor, but also address their needs.

Some of the ideas he raised included making a mobile phone work as a computer, and a television as a monitor. "Or, how about developing computers that respond to speech - in various languages - rendering keyboards unnecessary?" Gates' visit comes at a time when many Indian companies are increasingly turning toward open source operating systems, particularly Linux, as a low-cost alternative to Windows.

(www.outlook.com)