A little over a year after the formal opening of its global capability centre in Hyderabad, Goldman Sachs is implementing an aggresive expansion plan, one that will see the global invesment banking and financial services major likely close next year with 450,000 sq ft office space and a headcount of 2,500 in the city.
“We started last year in June with 45,000 sq ft… will have a total of 450,000 sq ft by third quarter of 2023,” Chief Administrative Officer of Goldman Sachs Services India and Head of Hyderabad Office Ravi Krishnan said, pointing to a multi-storied structure under construction in the same campus.
The plan is to be ready for onboarding more talent the firm is keen on, amid a demand for technology development and human capital management services provided by the GCC. The GCC in Bengaluru, which is a much larger facility and whose foundations were laid about 18 years ago, and in Hyderabad are deepest fintech of the firm and together second largest footprint for the firm globally.
Behind the expansion, remains an attractive talent pool, “fabulous infrastructure” and a supportive and encouraging government in Telangana, factors that made Goldman Sachs come to Hyderabad, Mr. Krishnan said in an interaction here recently. “At the inauguration we projected we will grow to 750 [staffers]… in one year we have exceeded the target and are about 1,300 plus now,” he said. The number is made of 900 employees and 400 contingent workers.
“We are on target to reach 2,500 [headcount] by 2023 end,” he said.
In doing so, the firm expects to hire more engineering talent aided by the relationships it has with leading institutions in Hyderabad such as IIT, IIIT, JNTU and Osmania University. Since skills from streams other than engineering are also needed, it has also initiated discussion with a few under-graduate colleges. Besides, it also hires through hackathons.
At the inauguration of the GCC here, Goldman Sachs said it has expanded its global centre for engineering and business innovation in India and the facility is set to emerge as a centre of excellence for consumer banking services, business analytics and platform engineering, including application of emerging technologies such as AI and Machine Learning.
Mr. Krishnan said beyond numbers, it is the interesting work, from platform engineering, compliance functions and global markets services, that attract the talent. “Hyderabad is one of the key centres to build up our digital consumer banking centres,” he said.
Human capital management services is another dimension of the work undertaken at GCC. “We call the process Hire-to-Retire… what are the lifecycle processes an employee goes through,” he said. The numbers the team handled speak volume. In last one year, the team at GCC processed around 18,000 new offer [letters] and did 22,000 background checks [globally], he said.
On the firm’s position on Work From Home, he said, “Our policy is to encourage people to come and work in our premises… we are a very collaborative culture. While all the capability to operate from home are provided as those are important elements of our crisis management ability, our stance is to encourage people to work from office.” The firm has about 8,000 employees in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The number will only grow, said Mr. Krishnan.