SAP Labs India looks to hire 1,000 employees, invest in AI technologies

Software major SAP Labs India is looking to hire close to 1,000 employees to fuel its growth plans for the year and will continue to invest in developing various AI technologies for its customers, said Sindhu Gangadharan, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of SAP Labs India.

“Around 40 percent of the Global R&D for SAP is happening here in India and quarter of the patents that come out from SAP is happening here. That is the reason why we are doubling down our investments in India…Talent acquisition has been phenomenal for us and we will definitely hire around 1,000 people this year,” Gangadharan said at a media roundtable on April 27.

SAP Labs India currently employs around 14,000 people, with an average annual hiring rate of 3,500. Gangadharan said that the company will be looking to hire people with domain expertise in finance, supply chain, sustainability, human experience management, and artificial intelligence along with other core operations.

There have been reports about SAP Labs in India laying off around 300 employees. However, Gangadharan clarified that the number accounts for only 2% of the total employee count and that most of the affected employees were repurposed to other strategic areas within the organization.

“We did not do mass layoffs like our competitors, however, we took a very dedicated, targetted approach on restructuring. We basically realigned our operations and only around 2-3% of the capacities across the globe were impacted,” Gangadharan said.

Speaking at the roundtable, Thomas Saueressig, Executive Board, SAP Product Engineering, SAP SE, said that SAP Labs has built around 160 AI applications for the world and will be scaling this further.

“SAP Labs India is constantly driving new innovations and new products for the world…We as a company embrace AI and have embedded it in our processes as well. We took a look at our portfolio and reduced focus on some areas and increase focus on areas like AI,” Saueressig said.

“Our investment will significantly go up towards building AI and in India, we see specific areas of interest for AI like within the sustainability and supply chain solutions,” he added.

Macroeconomic pressure and geo-political challenges have had very little impact on SAP Labs India as the company offers business-critical software for its clients, Saueressig said.

“A lot of companies are focusing on cost optimisation and cash, so our software provides business critical and efficiency-driving software for the finance, supply chain, and sustainability sectors,” he said.

SAP reported a 24 percent increase in cloud revenue to €3.18 billion in the first quarter of 2023, a 22 percent increase at constant currencies, and a rise of one percentage point sequentially.

“We are very positive about the growth in our business and this fiscal year we will pass €14 billion in cloud revenue this year and we are seeing so many exciting customers joining us on board,” Saueressig said.

SAP Labs India is also building a new campus in Bengaluru, which is said to be up and running by the end of 2024.

“We see a massive opportunity in India and which is why we are building another big capacity in Bengaluru…We are hoping to launch the facility by the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025,” Saueressig said. Monecontrol