HOW GCCs STOLE THE THUNDER FROM IT FIRMS

More MNCs are reducing their dependence on Indian IT services companies by building their in-house tech centres

- Leslie D'Monte & Shouvik Das

NatWest Group Plc., a Scotland-headquartered banking and insurance holding company, has two engineering hubs, in Poland and India. They house about one-third of NatWest’s global employees.

While half of the company’s India workforce works on technology and data analytics, it is also increasing its focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI applications. For instance, the bulk of the development and maintenance of its voice assistant chatbot, Cora, is executed in India.

Then, there is Visa Inc, the American multinational financial services corporation. It employs consultants and data scientists in India as part of its in-house tech division. They build the company’s proprietary AI and machine learning (ML) algorithms, says Sushmit Nath, head of Visa Consulting & Analytics, India & South Asia. Visa Consulting and Analytics is the multinational’s payments advisory arm. The in-house tech team uses anonymized data to build AI models for risk, credit assessment and advisory and offers them to customers within the country.

“Our India capability centre specifically designs and develops tech for the Indian and the South Asia market. But we also have tech teams based in Singapore and San Francisco, who work on developing models and solutions for our products, which we take cues from," says Nath.

For Notion Labs, a US-headquartered company known for its eponymous productivity and note-taking application, India is its biggest engineering centre outside of the US. “India has some of the best engineering talent in the world, which is why we plan to expand here, going forward," Ivan Zhao, chief executive officer (CEO) of the company, told Mint on 18 April. He added that engineers in India are working on technologies that include Notion’s AI and automation capabilities.