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Google could be planning to invest as much as an additional $1 billion in India, according to a Bear Stearns research report.
The research report, released Aug. 11, claims that the Mountain View, Calif., search engine giant is interested in investing in the city of Hyderabad, one of the largest urban areas in India and an emerging hub of IT and biotechnology.
“Google is planning to invest an additional $1 billion in India beyond its current investment in its R&D center in Bangalore,” said Robert Peck of Bear Stearns. “Our conversation with the company indicated that Google is definitely interested in investing in Hyderabad but unable to confirm the amount of investment, which could be significantly lower.”
The research paper, titled “Google to Spend $1 Billion in India?” is based, in part, on an article that appeared in one of Indias leading business daily papers, Business Standard, which is published by Business Standard Ltd.
In the research paper, Peck wrote that there is some uncertainty about the time frame for the investment. The paper calculates that Googles research and development and capital expenses during a five-year period from 2007 to 2011 will total somewhere between $12.7 billion and $17.8 billion.
“We would expect that Google would have target ROIs [returns on investment] for the incremental dollars it may plan to spend,” Peck wrote. “We continue to believe as Google pushes toward its goal of $100 billion of revenues that these types of investments are necessary and prudent.”
On its own Web site, Google is advertising for sales, operations, engineering and other jobs at its current Hyderabad offices. The office currently provides online sales, engineering and human resources functions.
The company also has a large investment at its R&D offices in Bangalore. Google wasnt immediately available for comment at the time of this posting.
Pecks paper points out that Google Finance was developed at the Bangalore R&D offices.