Cyanogen, which has developed an open-source mobile operating system, plans to expand aggressively in India to tap the opportunities offered by the world’s fastest growing Smartphone market. The US-based company is also evaluating possibilities to invest in or acquire startups to strengthen its product offerings.

“We are going to expand in India aggressively, and you can expect to see a lot more of us next year. Our Bengaluru team has 11 people, which will grow up to 60 people by the end of 2016,” co-founder and  Chief Executive Kirt McMaster told ET.

Cyanogen, which received $80 million financing from a bunch of investors including Premji Invest, Twitter Ventures and Qualcomm, just opened an office in Bengaluru.

It hired Qualcomm’s former Vice-President of engineering, Sachin Shirhatti, to head the team to build new products as well as focus on business development in India. “India is the fastest growing mobile market in the planet and we are here to support it. The big focus of the financing is to expand in India,” McMaster said.

Cyanogens started as an open-source project, Cyanogen Mod, to tinker with Google’s Android operating system in 2009 before becoming a full-fledged company in 2013. In India, the company officially entered through an exclusive partnership with Micromax’s online brand Yu, which has so far launched three Smartphone’s running the Cyanogens operating system.

Source: The Economic Times