Bengaluru has emerged as the third most important city in the map for Goldman Sachs. The global investment bank has launched a state-of-the art workplace in the city, which will host around 5,000 employees.
The company has spent around $250 million to set up this office, which will be a global centre for innovation at the intersections of technology and financial services. It took five years to build this office, which has 1.2 million square feet of building area housed within three 10 story towers connected at the ground level and a capacity for approximately 7,300 employees. The Bengaluru facility also boasts of world-class health, fitness and childcare facilities adjacent to 2.5 acres of landscaped outdoor parks and courtyards with over 400 trees.
The Bengaluru office is also important from a technology delivery standpoint as it has the second largest number of engineers after the bank’s New York headquarters.
On this milestone, David M. Solomon, chairman and chief executive officer, Goldman Sachs, says, “The Bengaluru office has grown in size and technological sophistication to become an incubator of talent for our businesses around the world. The significant investment we have made to build this state-of-the art workplace reflects the importance placed on the high-quality work done in India and our focus on hiring the best people.”
Goldman Sachs started its Bengaluru operations in 2004, and in the last five years, it has increased the pace of growth in the city. Since 2014, the Bengaluru office for Goldman Sachs has grown at 24 per cent, CAGR (year-over-year growth rate). The bank has also increased campus hiring of full-time employees in India by 20 per cent, during the same period.
The global investment bank has also increased hiring of engineers both full-time hires and interns by more than 60 percent in the last two years. In 2018 itself, Goldman Sachs recruited from 89 Indian universities and post-graduate programs.
Gunjan Samtani, head of Goldman Sachs, Bengaluru, says, “Our office has become one of the firm’s global centres of innovation focused on the development and application of artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics to help solve business problems for our worldwide network.”
The company has also ensured an outflow of Indian talent to the global arena. In the last five years, more than 700 professionals from India have been moved to international offices in New York, London, Hong Kong and San Francisco, across global divisions and business units.
The world-class facilities built into 150 ORR, commemorates the firm’s 150th anniversary this year.