The world’s third largest personal computer (PC) maker Dell on Tuesday said the company’s

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revenue from India is nearing the $2 billion mark. The company, which has a PC manufacturing plant at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, also plans to hire more people in India, the company’s founder and CEO Michael Dell told reporters here.

“India is a critical part of our infrastructure globally, with activities like research and development, IT services, sales and support, manufacturing and analytics. $2 billion is the milestone that our India team is now working on,” Dell said. However, he neither gave a time frame nor disclosed the current India revenue.

Dell, who was attending a Ficci event, left after fielding a few questions from reporters, saying he had a meeting with prime minister Manmohan Singh.However, an official from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) confirmed to Financial Chronicle that “there was no meeting scheduled for Michael Dell with the prime minister”.

Dell was in India on the same day last year (March 23, 2010) and had met the prime minister. After meeting Singh, he had said: “India is a big market and it’s growing very fast. Our India business is growing at 100 per cent. We are growing faster than the market, which is growing less than 100 per cent. We see enormous opportunities for growth in India.”

About Tuesday’s comments on attaining $2 billion revenue in India, the global chief did not give any timeframe. Also, he did not disclose India’s share of the company’s global annual revenue of $ 61.49 billion. Without elaborating, Dell said the company would hire “a few thousand” employees from India “over the next year or so”. It has 23,000 employees in India at present. Last month, Dell reported sales in India jumped 37 per cent in the three months ended January 28, outpacing the 21 per cent growth in the PC maker’s larger Chinese business.

According to global information technology research and advisory firm, Gartner, worldwide PC shipments totalled 93.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2010 (October-December), a 3.1 per cent increase from the fourth quarter of 2009.

Global PC market leader Hewlett-Packard (HP) shipped 17,581,525 (18 per cent share) PCs during the quarter, while Acer and Dell followed with 11,852,617 (12.7 per cent share) units and 10,801,225 (11.6 per cent share) units, respectively. However, in India, Dell ranks second after HP, according to market intelligence provider IDC. India's overall PC market sales (notebooks and desktops combined) touched 2.49 million units during the October-December 2010 quarter, recording a 26 per cent year-on-year growth. HP regained its market leadership after two quarters with an increased market share of 17.3 per cent, while Dell followed with 14.2 per cent. Acer with 11.5 per cent grabbed the third spot.