Also in the offing are scaling up of R&D activities to make India a worldwide hub for sourcing communication software and a centre for networking excellence in the Asia-Pacific region.

However, decisions to step up investments in the country would be closely linked to business volumes that the company generates from the market, said senior company officials.

Speaking to a group of visiting mediaperson, Lucent Technologies Asia-Pacific president Mike Butcher said the Indian market has been very sluggish lately. However, the company is bullish on India as a long-term market and would step up localisation of its solutions in the country, he added.

In an effort to be more aggressive in the Indian market, the company plans to step up project financing in the country. The company is also open to the idea of going for projects ona build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis, said officials. "If any licensee in India approaches us to do so, we will be happy to consider it," said Lucent Technologies Asia-Pacific chief financial officer and in-charge of India operations Daniel J Lovatt.

Officials said that the company is going through three proposals from India for technology and project financing. Proposals for project financing from Lucent's joint venture partners in the country would also be considered, said officials.

The company has set up a team at its Asia-Pacific regional headquaters at Hong Kong for evaluating such proposals. The criteria for evaluating risks would be no different than those undertaken by financial institutions, officials added.

Butcher said that the company's revenue from India has been growing at over 20 per cent annually. Around 90 per cent of the revenue comes from the three joint ventures the company has in India. The remaining comes from its direct operations.

Lucent has two joint ventures with Tata andone with Finolex Cables. The company has established Bell Labs R&D centre in Pune to develop software for business communication systems. Lucent Tecnologies Microelectronics group has set up a development centre in Bangalore which is devoted to core R&D activities.

Butcher said that Lucent will continue to participate in the Indian market place both in the private and public sector through its joint venture partners. Though there are no immediate plans to step up investment in the country, officials indicated that the company may scale up investment over the next three to five years. However, investments will be relative to the business situation, officials added.

Scale up the company's R&D efforts in India is high on the agenda. The R&D operations will be expanded to the degree of availability of talented people in the country, said officials.

Butcher said Lucent does not have any specific plans for acquisitions in the country. The company has been following an aggressive acquisition strategy eversince its spin-off from telecom major AT&T in 1995. As part of market expansion and technology adoption strategy, the company has acquired 28 companies in the last three years.

Lucent hopes to make Asia-Pacific region a hub for its R&D efforts over the next five years. "Our idea is to bring the R&D activity in the Asia-Pacific region at par with the work going on in the US," said Lucent's regional president Carl Hsu.

However, the company will not go for a single R&D centre in the region but have several such centres all over Asia. Hsu said the company will take a decision on where to set up the centre by the end of the year. The decision to set up the centres will be closely linked to the business a market generates, said Hsu.

India is likely to play a crucial role in the company's plans to make Asia-Pacific an R&D hub. As a major source for technical manpower in the region, India is expected to host one such R&D lab, said officials. However, China is almost certain to have one such facility given thebusiness volumes that the company generates in the country, officials said.

In 1998, Lucent had a revenue of $30.1 billion. Of this, over 30 per cent came from operations outside the US. Asia-Pacific accounts for 10 per cent of the company's business. However, business in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow at over 20 per cent over the next few years, said officials.