Ricoh Innovations expands R&D into India

MENLO PARK, USA: Ricoh Innovations Inc., a Silicon Valley-based subsidiary of Ricoh Co. Ltd, which develops innovative technologies and new business opportunities for Ricoh, announced the formation of Ricoh Innovations Pvt Ltd (RIPL) in India. RIPL, which will have its headquarters and first R&D facility in Bangalore, extends the operation of RII to address the rapidly growing India market.

“Ricoh continues to build a global research and development structure that harnesses outstanding talent and technical assets to innovate leading-edge technologies for a worldwide market,” said Hiroshi Kobayashi, corporate executive VP and director of Ricoh Company, Ltd. and chairman of the board of RII. “RIPL is an excellent example of this strategy, expanding the innovative research and development of RII to India, one of the world’s most dynamic and promising markets.”

Combining market-oriented technology development with regionally optimized research to pioneer new business tailored for the India market, RIPL’s software and systems R&D teams will focus on supporting cutting-edge projects in large market segments such as health care, education, finance, media and entertainment.

“The establishment of an R&D subsidiary in India is a natural fit to our goal of expanding our activities from Silicon Valley,” added Dr. Nikhil Balram, president and CEO of RII. “The surging Indian economy offers tremendous opportunities for new innovation. We are excited to be positioned to play a leading role.”

“I have been working closely in partnership with the RII team to address large opportunities in India,” added Dr. Kailash Joshi, former GM of IBM Lexington and co-founder of The Indus Entrepreneurs, a prominent global organization of entrepreneurs. “I have been very impressed with RII’s combination of innovation and business acumen, and am confident that RIPL will establish itself as a center of world-class R&D excellence.”

“Bangalore offers a large pool of talented engineers, researchers and entrepreneurs,” said Kaip Sridhar, managing director of RIPL. “We look forward to building an excellent multi-disciplinary team that can build on RII’s extraordinary technology base to address the many opportunities in India and similar emerging countries.”

The technologies and services developed by RIPL will form the groundwork for solutions for other large emerging regions in addition to India, including Africa and South Asia, which together constitute a market of over 2.5 billion people.