AFL enters India market to strengthen optic fiber capability

AFL, the US based $1 billion revenue manufacturer of fiber optic cable and accessories, announced manufacturing products with local partner.

In interaction with DH,  AFL  President and Chief Executive Officer  Jody Gallagher said the entry of the company is coinciding with government massive digitisation game plan.  

"We find great opportunities in Digital India game plan and massive deployment of fiber network. Our entry into the market is to address the data centre, especially hyperscale data centre, requirement in India right now," he said.  

Gallagher said the company has partnered with Bengaluru-based Citadel Intelligent Systems Pvt Ltd to set up the manufacturing facility. "The advanced fiber optic technology that AFL intends to build through CIS will cater to our global clients who are operating from India," he said.  

Citadel Intelligent Systems Pvt Ltd  CEO and Managing Director K K Shetty the company is looking at getting more certification and will hire 50 member team.  

"We will invest around $ 4 million. By March, 2018 we will be 100 and will scale up to 500 employees by 2022.  We have already started exporting to other customers (non-AFL) in US. We will start exporting from April this year to AFL," said Shetty.  

"Besides meeting the local requirement, we will export to the global demands of AFL. Next year we will recruit around 400 staff and majority of them will be from Karnataka only," he said.  

Besides China, Vietnam and Mexico, the 30 year of company  which is a  wholly-owned subsidiary of Japanese company Fujikura Limited,  has multiple manufacturing facilities in the US.    

"The current data center market in India is valued at $2.2 billion and is expected to reach $4.5 billion mark by 2018. We are looking at first addressing 20% of this market," he said.  

Gallagher said the company is focusing on optic fibre, enterprise solutions and energy sectors. "We have a total employees of 5000 and has development centres in Seattle, UK and China. We are ready to come up with one in Bengaluru soon to tap rich talent pool here," he said.