Brief

Symantec’s Centre of Innovation

Symantec does lots of acquisitions, partnerships and builds technologies as a part of innovation and is planning to expand its partnership capabilities in India. The company invests approximately 15 percent of its annual revenue into R&D and has two Centres of Innovation in India located at Pune and Chennai.

“Symantec’s Centres of Innovation in India are committed to fostering and sustaining innovation,” says Anil Chakravarthy, VP, India Technical Operations, Symantec.

Recently Symantec has appointed Basant Rajan as the CTO for its Centres of Innovation in India. With a new CTO, Symantec is looking at long-term success and customer loyalty through innovative next-generation technologies, architectures and standards.

Basant’s mandate is to advance Symantec’s partnerships with the technical community in India and actively engage with customers, academia, government, research and technology organisations. He will work closely with government agencies in the security and compliance domains, and interact frequently with customers on technology strategy.

“Innovation is not just invention but a solution that can create an impact in the market and the ideas which are different from the existing lines needs a creative team. Symantec recognises the technology talent in India and has appointed a CTO to cultivate and harness this potential,” says Mark Bregman, Executive VP and CTO, Symantec. He feels India is full of innovative ideas for instance the security needs of the next billion internet users hence require a CTO to coordinate these needs across business.

Symantec would be starting some innovative projects and for these the company is planning to set an advanced concept team in India. Right now they have two such teams in the US.

The CTO will be instrumental in steering the Symantec research Labs (SRL) and Advanced Concept Group (ACG) projects in India. “India is a hotbed for engineering talent, the new role gives me an exciting opportunity to foster knowledge sharing within this talent base and be an activator of technology for Symantec and reach out to the technical community in India,” says Basant.

India is one of Symantec’s largest R&D and engineering sites with a headcount of more than 2,200 in Pune and an additional 1,000 who will be recruited in its recently opened centre in Chennai.