DBS India to hire 600-800 persons for expansion plan

DBS India will hire about 600-800 persons in the next one and a half years as part of its expansion plans, as the Singaporean lender now has acquired a domestic subsidiary licence in India, a senior official of the bank said. As part of its branch expansion to nine new locations during this month, three branches kick-started in Gurugram, Noida and Coimbatore.

"We are looking anywhere between 600-800 people for our branch expansion over the next 12-18 months, including people at our technology development centre in Hyderabad," Shantanu Sengupta, head (consumer banking group), DBS Bank India, said at the inauguration of the Gurugram branch.

The DBS group has close to 1,200 persons at its Hyderabad technology centre which was started from scratch about two and a half years ago, he said.

DBS India said the expansion drive, which includes establishing over 100 customer touch points, a combination of branches and kiosks across 25 cities in the next 12-18 months, entails an investment of Rs 125-150 crore.

Three branches were opened in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Vadodara, while one more was added in Mumbai. Two more branches will come up in Indore and Ludhiana.

DBS Group until now used to operate through branches in 12 cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Nashik. The Singaporean lender is the largest foreign bank to become a fully-owned local subsidiary.

The bank is also looking to treble its balance sheet size over the next five years from about Rs 50,000 crore currently and will set up around 100 customer touch-points over the next 12-18 months.

The bank said it would also rejig its business portfolio mix by focusing more on the retail and small business enterprises.

"Retail business is absolutely our focus. Going forward, we see a broad cut of 40:30:30 coming from large corporate, SME and retail business. Retail for us is primarily digitally led the business for us," said Niraj Mittal, head (institutional banking group), DBS Bank India.

Last week, the Reserve Bank of India approved the Singaporean lender's proposal to become a wholly-owned subsidiary and on Monday, it announced the official launch of its locally-incorporated unit -- DBS Bank India.

DBS Bank India plans to add 1000 more techies at tech hub in Hyderabad

DBS Bank India is looking to hire around 1,000 more technology engineers for its technology centre 'DBS Asia Hub 2' here over the next 24 months, a top official said.

The DBS Group had established a technology hub DBS Asia Hub 2 in Hyderabad in 2016, the group's largest technology and operations hub outside of Singapore.

The Singaporean lender is the largest foreign bank to become a fully-owned local subsidiary.

"The hub has about 2,000 engineers building smartest solutions, 1,200 software engineers and developers work with DBS and about 800 who work with partners and build our technology products.

We expect to grow it to 3,000 over the next 24 months," DBS Bank India chief executive Surojit Shome told reporters after launching its first branch in Hyderabad.

He said they expect the bank's balance sheet to grow by three times in the next five years from the current Rs 50,000 crore.

The bank invested (capital) Rs 7,700 crore for its banking business in India and Rs 1,800 crore was invested in 2018.

DBS Bank India currently operates in 12 cities and intends to establish over 100 customer touchpoints-a combination of branches and kiosks--across 25 cities in the next 12-18 months and invest Rs 125 crore to Rs 150 crore on the network expansion.

"Roughly about half of what we develop (digital solutions) is developed in the second technology centre (DBS Asia Hub 2) in Hyderabad.

We expect to employ around 1,000 more technology engineers and people with software skills as we build new solutions," he said.

DBS Asia Hub 2-Head Mohit Kapoor said the recruitment drive is already on and hiring is done through different channels, including hackathon.

CBRE to hire 3,000 employees in India

Global property consultant CBRE will hire 3,000 employees across India this year for business expansion, it's country head Anshuman Magazine said.

CBRE's India revenue grew 20 per cent during 2018 and expects to maintain its growth even in 2019, he said, but did not disclose the turnover figure.

The consulting firm has entered into housing brokerage and now plans to expand this business in a big way, Magazine, chairman and CEO of India, South East Asia, the Middle East and Africa, CBRE said.

"We are a growing service firm and the only asset we have is people. Therefore, we have been hiring the best talent available in the market since the last few years,” he told reporters while launching its new headquarter at Gurugram.

"In 2019, we expect to hire 3,000 people across India to meet our growth requirement," Magazine said. At present, CBRE India has around 8,300 employees who provide various services in the real estate sector.

These services include that of advisory and transaction capital market, project management, consulting and valuations, facilities and property management.

On housing brokerage, Magazine said, the company is selling flats in major cities of South and West India with sale force of 75 people.

"We want to grow this business as there is a huge scope. But, we will be cautious in our approach and market projects of only credible developers," he said.

In housing brokerage business, CBRE will be competing with the likes of Anarock, PropTiger, JLL India, Quikr, Square Yards, 360 Realtors, Investor Clinic and Wealth Clinic, among others.

Magazine noted that warehousing, co-working, co-living, student housing, healthcare, education and hospitality sectors are the new asset class where one can expect growth going forward.

“We expect institutional investment in this sector apart from regular inflows in housing, office and retail assets,” he said, adding that warehousing and logistics sector is already attracting huge investment post GST.

HTC Global Services to Hire 3,000 People in India

HTC Global Services looks to hire 2,000-3,000 people in India over the next two years to support its $1-billion revenue target by 2020.

 The Troy, Michigan-headquartered IT services company has a strong employee base across its development centres in Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The company has 11,000 employees globally including Ciber and CareTech, acquired in 2014.

HTC — which acquired Ciber, an IT consulting firm, for $93 million in 2017 — said, post integration with the company it has a larger base of clients. The company is looking to increase its share of automation led services to achieve faster growth. “We are finalising hiring (numbers), and it will not be less than 2,000-3,000 people by 2020 for India,” said Chary Mudumby, chief technology officer, HTC Global Services, adding that its customers are looking for better value resulting in an increased demand for talent with domain knowledge.

HTC, a mid-sized IT services firm, is joining large global firms such as IBM, Capgemini and Accenture to leverage offshore resources in India, as they struggle to find talent that works in newer areas such as digital and cloud. “We are trying to bring in talent from the educational institutions because the current market demand for emerging technology is more,” added Mudumby.

Companies such as HTC and others have seen a disruption in their business model as clients in the US and other markets are now demanding more digital technology-led delivery.

For example, HTC said it is now using automation and predictive analytics to bring down the need for support in application development and services for a client’s business.

“Customers of HTC and Ciber have experienced the positive benefits of acquisition and integration, and the capabilities have doubled,” said Mudumby.

Amazon has 1,300 Vacancies in India, highest in Asia-Pacific

In Asia-Pacific, Amazon has the highest number of job openings in India, according to data on its website. There are almost three times as many openings here compared to that in China. Even outside Asia-Pacific and excluding home ground the US, only Germany appears to have about as many openings as India.

Across different businesses and various roles, including technology, Amazon has almost 1,300 openings in India. China has 467 job openings and Japan 381. Australia and Singapore follow with 250 and 174, respectively.

The company in India is said to be expanding significantly beyond its e-commerce and cloud business (AWS) into areas such as payments, content (Prime video), voice-assistant (Alexa), food retail and customer support. At the end of 2018, it directly employed over 60,000 people in India. That's about 10% of its global strength of 6.1 lakh employees. Most of the fresh hiring will be in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Industry sources said Amazon could use this employment generation to push its case in the ongoing policy discussion with the Centre. The recently announced clarifications by the government on FDI in e-commerce could force the Seattle-based e-tailing giant to significantly change its business model in India. The new rules, which seek to make e-commerce players into pure technology platforms, with little control over sellers on the platform, come into effect next month.

A company spokeswoman said Amazon sees India as a strong talent location. Amazon teams in India, she said, work on complex business challenges to innovate and create effective solutions that enable various Amazon businesses - both in India as well as globally, including Amazon websites across the world - and also support payments, transportation, and digital products & services like the Kindle family of tablets, e-readers and the store.

"With our constant growth, we are always looking for some exceptional talent across levels in areas of software development, product & marketing, machine learning, quality assurance, web development, product management, supply chain, content development, operations, studio & photography and for other positions in the India consumer business. We have created thousands of skilled and semi-skilled jobs in India over the past decade," she said.

IKEA to create 10,000 Jobs in Maharashtra India

IKEA India, the Swedish home furnishing retailer is now planning to start its operations in Mumbai with the intentions to create 10000 jobs. IKEA plans to enter Mumbai with a large format store, city centre smaller stores and e-commerce offerings by 2019.

The 10,000 jobs will include 5,000 direct and 5,000 indirect jobs in Maharashtra alone. "The first big format store will be in Turbhe, Navi Mumbai and will employ 1000 direct co-workers and 1500 indirect co-workers for various services," stated the company's release.

The company intends to employ 50 % women at all the levels. “We are very excited to meet the many talented people of Mumbai who will bring their uniqueness to IKEA and strengthen our values. We would like to welcome all those who share our values to join us,” Anna-Carin Månsson, Country People and Culture Manager, IKEA India said.

IKEA offers policies such as daycare facilities (DAGIS), parental leave policy, transport policy, competence development, mentoring, pension plan etc.

AQR Capital to hire 150 Highly-skilled Techies in Bengaluru

AQR Capital Management said it would hire nearly 150 highly skilled tech professionals including data scientists and quantitative engineers in Bengaluru over the next couple of years.

The US-headquartered firm, which manages multiple client-focused portfolios and invests in public equity and other instruments globally, looks to strengthen its portfolio management using the technology innovation in Bengaluru.

AQR’s assets under management stood at $226 billion as on September 30.

The company announced the launch of its engineering centre and said: “the Bengaluru team will collaborate closely with its US engineering group on the development of technology central to AQR’s research, portfolio management and trading systems”.

The Bengaluru office will be led by Chrys Kattirisetti, India Country Head, AQR.

While it will hire nearly 15 people over the next two months of this year; AQR will ramp up hiring early next year.

“We will be hiring from Indian Institute of Technology next year onwards. 40% of the total hire would be freshers. We believe engaging Bangalore’s top technology talent will fuel our ability to further develop the cutting-edge technology that underpins our investment processes,” said Neal Pawar, chief technology officer, AQR.

The company said its Bengaluru team would focus on developing and enhancing solutions primarily on a cloud-based platform, including trading systems, data and visualization tools, portfolio analytics, and micro-services to support a variety of front office platforms.

AQR will conduct specific coding tests to figure out the strength of professionals and expects the prospective employees to be hands-on in such areas.

Pawar said 10-15% of its technology work is outsourced to a Pune-based Indian IT services company, but the team at Bengaluru office would focus on proprietary technology development.