RIYADH, 21 August 2007 — The $1.27 billion HCL Technologies Ltd. of India is planning to invest in the Kingdom’s IT sector is part of its long-term plan to beef up the company’s presence here and extend it to other Gulf states. This was disclosed to Arab News by Vineet Nayar, the company’s president, who said in a telephone interview from his headquarters in New Delhi that the details would be spelled out in a month.

“We would like to be a major player in this region and also want to make a significant investment here,” said Nayar, described by “Fortune” magazine as a management guru for his innovative style. One of the strengths of HCL Technologies, he pointed out, is to boost the competitiveness of their clients by providing innovative IT solutions.

The HCL chief said his company was always briefing its clients on current developments deemed relevant to their interest. The idea was to keep them abreast of the changing scenario. “We are telling them how they could be competitive on a global footprint. We have already approached some major international banks and other financial institutions in this regard.”

Nayar said that the partnership with AEC, a Saudi economic offset company, has gone better than expected. HCL, which has a team of 40,000 professionals operating in 17 countries around the world, signed an agreement with AEC in April this year to implement IT projects in Saudi Arabia.

Under the agreement, AEC and HCL Technologies, through the wholly owned subsidiary, will jointly work to implement and execute integrated IT solutions and services for business transformation covering end-to-end of the IT spectrum, including systems integration, package implementation, application development and maintenance, IT infrastructure management, and BPO. The HCL-AEC alliance also marked the inauguration of HCL’s IT Management Center (IMC) at AEC headquarters in Riyadh.

Nayar hoped that this partnership with AEC would pave the way for HCL’s entrance into the Kingdom’s burgeoning market, especially in the context of the six economic cities to be built in different parts of the Kingdom.

“The IT Management Center which we announced was only in anticipation of the economic activities that are likely to go up all over the Kingdom,” said Nayar. “We believe that through this partnership we would be able to take advantage of the opportunities that will be emerging in different parts of Saudi Arabia. So we are pretty excited about these new developments.”