Hewlett Packard Enterprise has announced its plan to invest $500 million in India over the next five years. This strategic investment underscores HPE’s long-term commitment to India and will enable the company to grow its operations, manufacturing and employee base in the country, increase its R&D and services exports, as well as invest in technology initiatives to drive positive change for local Indian communities.

Antonio Neri, President and CEO of HPE and a member of the US-India CEO Forum, says, “The Modi 2.0 administration’s vision of a $5 trillion economy is impressive and fitting for a country with this level of energy and opportunity. India is one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in the world, and our investments will further develop the country as a critical market for HPE’s global business, as well as benefit our customers, partners, employees and the citizens of India.”

Development of India as a Key Growth Market through Hiring and Manufacturing

To support India’s continued growth as a strategic market for HPE’s global business, HPE plans to increase its workforce in India by 20% over the next three to five years. In particular, HPE will hire new engineering talent with expertise in areas of critical importance to customers such as AI and networking.

HPE will also begin construction of a high-tech extension to its Mahadevapura Campus in Bengaluru that will be able to house more than 10,000 employees, as well as state-of-the-art R&D facilities. When complete, the 1.3-million-square-foot campus will feature a state-of-the-art workplace, powered by HPE technologies, designed to enhance the employee, customer, and partner experience and foster a culture of innovation. The campus will support a broad range of functions including R&D, engineering services, finance, and sales.

HPE also plans to commence manufacturing in India. The company is scheduled to start manufacturing Aruba’s portfolio of mobility and IoT solutions in India before the end of 2019. Data and connectivity are catalysts for growth in India, and Aruba’s strong intellectual property and mobile-first philosophy make it ideally poised to facilitate this growth. The manufacturing capability in India will allow Aruba to rapidly innovate networking solutions that will deliver benefits in support of the Digital India agenda and to customers across the country.

Investments in Innovation to Drive Positive Societal Change

The HPE investment also includes innovations in support of the Indian government’s initiatives to apply technology to drive positive societal change in critical areas.

· eEducation - To address the gap of digital literacy among youth in rural areas, HPE has collaborated with NASSCOM Foundation to establish fully equipped digital classrooms under National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM). These digital classrooms are an innovative, practical and cost-effective solution to deliver skills training to citizens seeking digital literacy education.There are over 50 digital classrooms across the country with four more set to be launched shortly in Maharashtra.

Additionally, HPE along with Agastya International Foundation will set-up a Center of Excellence in Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh, focused on skilling students in IoT-based agriculture. The facility features advanced IT solutions that are at the leading edge of the agricultural sector’s innovation toward higher food production from finite land resources.

· eHealth - Addressing the need for affordable healthcare in emerging cities, the HPE eHealth Center (eHC) initiative helps improve access and effectiveness of primary healthcare in underserved areas. These eHCs are a cloud-enabled healthcare infrastructure solution that also offer health data analytics. Across India, more than 130 eHCs and 150 mobile eHCs are operational,and 15new centers will be established across six states. The eHCs have already facilitated over800,000 patient visits.

In support of the government’s target of making India TB-free by 2025, HPE announced it has signed the USAID TB pledgeto provide free diagnostic services to more than 50,000 people through its eHC network.

· Digital Village –Aligning with the government’s initiative to launch 100,000 digital villages in the next five years, HPE is today announcing a further five villages to benefit from a range of services including the HPE Digital Classroom, HPE’s eHealth Center, free public Wi-Fi provided by HPE Aruba and a range of online citizen services. This builds on the successful pilot launched last year in Manasampally, Telangana.

Helping Indian Enterprises Drive Digital Transformation

Finally, the HPE investment will help enterprises in India redefine experiences, drive intelligent operations and extract value from their data. For example, Vodafone Idea, the largest mobile operator in India, is working with HPE to transform the network's Service & Network Operations Center which controls its vast network and service offerings to over 334 million subscribers using HPE next generation operations support systems (OSS) and HPE Intelligent Assurance to turn vast amounts of telecommunications network data into actionable insight.