France’s Thales to open engineering centre in Bengaluru, may rope in 2,000 techies

French aerospace and defence company Thales will set up an engineering centre in Bengaluru by early next year, vice-president and country director Emmanuel de Roquefeuil told The Times of India. 

The centre could house up to 2,000 engineers in the next three to five years. The Paris-headquartered company said that the India centre would work on high value-added software domains such as air traffic management, in-flight connectivity and entertainment, complex avionics systems, cockpit and flight management systems, radar software and advanced hardware technologies such as radio frequency/designs for radars and communications.

Directly and indirectly, Thales employs more than 1,500 people in India. The firm aims to employ 5,000 people in India in the future, the report said. 

Thales had recently acquired digital security company Gemalto. It had also acquired Guavus, a Big Data and analytics company, to strengthen its software capabilities. Both these companies have offices in India. Thales has more than 65,000 employees in 56 countries.

Bengaluru is home to the country's largest defence manufacturing base including government-owned companies and research and development divisions of companies such as Boeing, GE, Honeywell and Airbus. It also has the strongest aeronautical engineering capability among Indian cities.