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EMC is shopping for Indian startups

India hopes for slice of emerging tech shop-fest

EMC has revealed that it's set aside US$2.3 billion for acquisitions, and is tagging the startup sector in India as one target for its shopping expeditions.

The company has told India's The Economic Times in India that it has a particular eye for startups in that country. Chirantan Desai, who heads up EMC's emerging technology products division told the outlet that the storage giant has already contacted some potential acquisition targets.

It's particularly interested in flash storage, software defined storage, and converged infrastructure, Desai told The Economic Times, with an eye to making sure EMC can keep pace with the performance demands of emerging enterprise applications. Which is not to say the demand is enormous: IDC's new Storage User Demand Study, 2013 — Fall Edition: Rising Adoption of Flash Storage found that "There are still plenty of end users who don't see a value in adopting flash-based storage systems", but that falling prices are likely to make flashy arrays more attractive before too much time has passed.

EMC also told the newspaper its internal R&D spend will match its acquisitions budget, and it's launching a hiring drive in the subcontinent, looking for data scientists, storage specialists and engineering graduates to boost its existing 3,500 workforce in India.

An acquisition drive could also be viewed in the light of Elliott Management's push to have the company spin out the VMWare business, having bought US$1 billion of EMC shares.

If Desai were able to deliver the right acquisitions to CEO Joe Tucci, it could help boost the value of EMC stock, giving other investors reason to maintain the faith, and help Tucci keep his titanic reputation intact ahead of his retirement in February 2015. ®

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