bangalore usheadquartered bridgeco a developer of semiconductors for the home entertainment equipment market has over the last year transferred its entire operations to indiathough bridgeco started operations in 2000 in switzerland and maintains its corporate headquarters in the us the companys technology development operational centre and global customer support is now fully in indiait provides processor and software solutions for connecting consumer electronic ce products to the internet and home network media sources bridgeco has around 100 clients including pioneer jbl nokia sony philips and thomsonthe companys chips enable greater connectivity of wifi internet audio or even playlists and photos off the home networked pc to the various ce gadgets like speakers and stereo systems in your living room kitchen or bedroomwhen the company launched operations it focused on digital recording for professional musicians around three years back the company decided that there is a need to focus on the home entertainment market and find a more suitable operational baseafter scouting locations like china and taiwan we finalized on india due to its software prowess and emerging hardware talent unlike most semicon companies for us software solutions is as vital and strategic as the hardware component said gene sheridian ceo bridgecothe company had 60 employees in switzerland before shifting operations to india in india it has so far recruited 70 engineers and plans to double that number by the end of this yearthe venture capital vc backed company has invested 20 million in india so far and plans to triple investments over the next couple of years the company is currently working on introducing new applications expanding into newer geographies and offering newer technology areas such as automobile entertainment they have also filed for 6 patents its jukeblox 20 platform which integrates streaming music apps such as pandora rhapsody and napster with digital music content like ipod dab and sirius satellite radio programming was developed in bangaloresheridian said that their biggest markets are in the us europe and japan but increasingly we expect greater consumer sophistication in the asiapacific region hence it makes sense for us to be close to where the markets will grow in future he said sheridian added that the company makes chips at about a tenth of the cost of larger rivals like intel and has therefore been able to win some big clients in a short span apart from the cost arbitrage of working in india we are heavily focused in this segment and thus are able to keep our prices very competitive he said