5 MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES THAT BUILT R&D CENTRES IN BANGALORE

Forty years ago, Bangalore turned on a dime. From pensioner’s paradise, the city morphed into a global leader of technological innovation. A virtuous circle of growth followed up by an explosive dynamism and a network of intellectual capital sustained by ongoing knowledge exchange.

In 2016 alone, Bangalore accounted for 35% of the global in-house centers (GIC) in India. The value of R&D done in India is estimated to be around $40 billion and is expected to only increase in the years to come.

The primary contributing factor here is the heavy concentration of high-tech talent who can build custom software for your business at a lower cost. It has a unique appeal to Western companies whose increased market pressure means the need for skilled developers without the eye-watering costs of labor and real-estate. And that’s precisely why multinational companies choose to R&D in Bangalore. Here are five such companies that seized the opportunity and leveraged the IT talent pool in Bangalore, also known as The Silicon Valley of Asia.

1. Google

With hundreds of tech companies and startups, Bangalore is not only home to India’s brightest innovators and entrepreneurs but has also successfully attracted some of the biggest multinational corporations to invest in the country. One such company that decided to R&D in Bangalore is Google.

Google set up its R&D office in 2003, employing more than 1000 software engineers, top programmers, and computer scientists to carry out projects in data mining, data warehousing, business intelligence, and knowledge management. Located in Bagmane Tech Park, Google’s office in Bangalore neighbors Samsung, Amazon, and Ernst & Young.

Touted to be Google’s first full-fledged engineering facility outside the US, the Bangalore team has also been subject to the company’s notoriously high standards. Google’s first Code Jam event in Asia took place in Bangalore and was an efficient method for scooping up the world-class technical talent for its R&D entity in the city. Not unlike its fellow MNCs, Google chose Bangalore due to its enormous untapped talent pool.

Google’s decision to move out of the US to find its technical pioneers relates to the same visa issues currently under threat from Donald Trump; it simply wasn’t possible to obtain enough visas to fill the positions domestically with foreign labor. On the other hand, local labor was also scarce, and they were left with many open positions that needed to be filled.

Unlike the majority of companies who set up shop in Bangalore, the movie was not a cost-cutting measure but a technical necessity. Google jumped at the opportunity to ride the wave of innovation sweeping across India, and today, the country has been a key driver of the company’s growth.

2. IBM

IBM’s R&D entity dates back to 1998 when thousands of data professionals, business analysts, and engineers were hired. In 2003, the company began actively hiring engineers in India, spread across cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, and of course, Bangalore. By 2007, the number of employees hired in India grew by 800%.

Today, IBM runs four parallel research organizations in Bangalore – IBM Software Labs, IBM Research Labs, IBM Global Technology Services Labs, and IBM Hardware Labs. These labs are pioneering the future of artificial intelligence with key research in areas like Deep Learning Algorithms and Infrastructure, Dialog and Conversation Systems, Cognitive IoT Platforms, Knowledge Extraction, Representation, and Reasoning, Blockchain, and Data security.

Know more about R&D centers in Bangalore

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Created on Aug 5th 2020 05:52. Viewed 383 times.

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