Finland Government plans to open an innovation network centre in New Delhi next week. It will be the fifth centre for Finland Government across the globe. The other centres are located in U.S., Russia, China and Finland.
The India centre will generate ideas and innovations across all fields and mainly in the area of education, technology and engineering. It will form network groups, which will identify the ideas and innovations, according to Terhi Hakala, Ambassador of Finland to India.
Ms. Hakala, who was here to inaugurate the new facility for Stera Engineering (India) Pvt Ltd in Chennai, said the Finland Government had identified three locations apart from Tamil Nadu, namely, Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore for expanding its businesses. Bilateral trade had been less than one billion euro (around Rs.6,500 crore), she added. Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday after the inauguration of the facility, she said that at present there were 100 Finnish companies directly working in India and another 100 were working with partners. Nearly 20 Finnish companies were in Tamil Nadu with total employee strength of 16,000. Similarly there were nearly 20 Indian companies working directly in Finland, she added.
Stera Engineering, a wholly owned-subsidiary of Stera, had invested nearly 3 million euro in Chennai to set up a new bigger facility with a floor space of 50,000 sq. ft. The facility in which the company was earlier operating (10,000 sq. ft.) would be shut down. The new facility would make enclosure cabinets for telecom, healthcare and industrial usage, according to Jyri Kontio, Managing Director of Stera Engineering.
Stera globally focussed on mechanical and electromechanical assemblies. Although most of the production was contract manufacturing, Stera was making its own products such as passenger boarding bridges for airports and cabinets and enclosures for electronics and telecommunications, said Heikki Ajanko, President and Chief Executive Officer of Stera Technologies Oy.
