‘India an important market for sales and R&D’: HP CEO Enrique Lores

Lores has been optimistic about the opportunities that the Indian market offers in terms of growth potential, joining other major tech companies that are eyeing the Asian market due to its large untapped consumer base and top talent.

HP is among the growing list of companies that are gradually diversifying their supply chains. (Image: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

“India is the second country in the world where we have the most employees, and a large number of them are engineers working specifically in software development, which we will integrate into the rest of the portfolio,” he said.

HP, which makes computing products including laptops, printers and other related technologies and services, has also been looking at India for manufacturing its personal computers. This is significant for both India and HP, which helps the American computer maker to diversify its supply chain.

Late last year, HP gave an order to the local contract manufacturer Dixon Technologies, which will make laptops and desktops under the government’s performance-linked Make in India scheme. Manufacturing in India helps HP become more competitive, as it can offer its products at lower price points.

“One of the big changes we have made in India over the last 12 months is that we have started manufacturing products in India in a significant way. As you know, there are regulations requiring products to be built locally. We adopted these regulations a few months ago, and this month in April will mark the first month in which the new factory in India will begin producing notebooks. We see this as the first step of a much broader presence in the country,” Lores said.

For HP, this pivot to India is crucial. HP is among the growing list of companies that are gradually diversifying their supply chains and moving production bases to other countries in an effort to rely less on China. Washington’s growing tensions with Beijing have forced many consumer companies, especially those that use China as a manufacturing location, to reduce their overwhelming reliance on Chinese production facilities. Additionally, companies like HP and others are vulnerable to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese-made goods.

Many experts see India as an alternative to China in the future, with the Indian government trying to replicate what China initially did by positioning itself as a major manufacturing hub while offering access to a large, young population. This makes India a unique market that presents a huge opportunity for growth, along with access to top talent.
Unlike smartphones, PCs still have low penetration in India, which allows companies like HP to further explore this market and sell new-age personal computers with built-in artificial intelligence features.

Additionally, more and more PC companies are looking to sell commercial AI PCs to large corporations and SMBs, where the adoption of AI features is high, as the use cases are well-defined. HP is India’s top PC maker by market share, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).

“Something we are not doing in India yet, but are doing in other countries, is working with local authorities to develop models that leverage the local culture. We are doing that in Spain, where we are collaborating with local universities and the government to develop a Spanish-specific large language model that integrates all aspects of Spanish culture. We are also working on the same front in Saudi Arabia, developing a similar model in Arabic. We believe this will have a lot of potential in countries like India as well,” he said when asked about how HP is looking to deploy AI models developed locally into its products.

(Disclaimer: The writer is in Nashville, Tennessee attending the Amplify conference at the invitation of HP)