India’s Huge Tech Talent Base Attracting Global Firms For Setting Up R&D Centres

India has emerged as a favourite for global firms in terms of setting up GCCs (Global Capability Centres). With more than 1,700 centres in the country, many are leading cutting-edge R&D work from Indian centres. US-headquartered cybersecurity firm, Arctic Wolf, which has opened its GCCs last year in Bengaluru, is rapidly expanding its centres in the country. With acquisition of Cylance, the company now has centres both in Bengaluru and Noida.

In an interview with the Bizz Buzz, Dan Schiappa, Chief Product and Services Officer at Arctic Wolf said that Indian centres have been doing core development work for the global cybersecurity firm apart from driving innovations. He also said that India’s technology talent is drawing many global firms for setting up R&D centres in the country

What are your views on India as a key R&D centre for Arctic Wolf amid rapid development in the AI space?

India is a critical part of our growth strategy, certainly on the R&D side. We have invested significantly in India and continue to invest. To grow our company very rapidly and remain a leading player in the cybersecurity space, we need good talent. And India is a giant pool of amazing talent in the cyber space. So, we have made our investment in Bengaluru and now with the acquisition of Cylance, we brought other locations like Noida (Under our fold). So, we will continue to grab as much talent as we can and grow rapidly. Our headcount is around 300 people in India after this acquisition.

Does India R&D centre contribute to core development work done by Arctic Wolf? Can you provide some views on this aspect?

We do core development work in our R&D centre in India. We have teams, which are leading key elements of development work. Similarly, there are teams, who are leading our innovation research. We have engineers including data scientists, artificial intelligence team, and others. So, they are critical to our overall R&D done by the company. They are not into testing or related work. They are very much core of our R&D work.

We see increasing collaboration of GCCs with IT services players. Do you have any collaboration in India?

We don’t have any of that today. We do development work with our own employees. But at some point in future, we will look at it.

India is no longer a cost arbitrage play for global firms. Rather, they are setting up R&D centres in India because of sound talent base. Is that the right understanding?

Absolutely. Though there is certain cost efficiency in Indian operations, but as you hire more senior professionals, the cost difference narrows. So, it is primarily about great talent. We don’t look at India as a way to save cost. We look at attracting more talent.

Have you completed the integration process post the acquisition of Cylance? Do you have any plans to expand further in coming quarters in India?

From people perspective, we have done the integration. The technical integration will start now. Over the next year, there will be full integration. We are hearing how AI & generative AI are bringing in new ways of doing things for the technology firms including product companies, IT services firms, tech startups and others.

What is your view about the impact of AI on cybersecurity segment in particular? Does it bring in much disruption in this space?

I think, our industry leveraging AI for quite some time now. Cylance has been one of the pioneers in adopting AI solutions, which has brought in many changes in the industry. Currently, AI is complementing efficiency of the sector in many ways. Now, we see fundamental change with the advent of large language models (LLMs).

How we use that to improve our interfaces for the user? How do we make security system more efficient? To give a perspective in this matter, every single day, we collect 1.3 trillion pieces of security information. This is vast amount of data and you can’t analyse this amount of data only through human intervention. You have filter that data so that you will filter the noise. For this, AI is used.

Similarly, you have to analyse the data to see any malicious activity there. So, for host of activities, we have AI wired in every step. A lot of that AI work is being done by Indian engineers in India. I also want to highlight another fact. I have a lot of experience in building teams in India. Five years ago, you didn’t find many data scientists in India, you may find data engineers but not data scientists. But, now we can really get talented data scientists in India. So, there is no team where you will not find good quality Indian talent.

What are the new innovations that are being driven in Indian centres? We are witnessing global technology firms laying off people despite sound revenue growth. There is certain non-linearity playing out. How do you see the phenomenon?

Look, we are a high growth company. We are one of the fastest growers in our scale in the cybersecurity space. We are growing our headcount to maintain that growth. We are developing new products and capabilities. So, we are in the mode of growing and that is the reason we are expanding in India. About the types of work, many of the cutting-edge work is done out of India. We have data scientists in India and other centres, who are involved with security operation centres. India centre is focussed on many innovations. Our team in India collaborates with global team.

Will you explore India as a market given that cybersecurity spend in India is growing at a fast pace?

Certainly, we will sell our products in India. Most probably, we will start with products from Cylance. Eventually, we will sell all our products. Though there is no immediate plans to do it but there is no doubt, at some point of time, we will do it.

India has seen rapid establishment of GCCs by global firms. Can you give us some pain points that you face in India during your operations?

There is no pain point as such. We have to adjust with the time zones. The collaboration happens across India, North America and others. However, we know how to work around it. Also, due to high demand for tech talent and Indian job market, there are certain percentage of people, who accept the offer and never join. Though things have improved a lot, there is still a pain point for us. But, we plan for that and we stay prepared for that. Otherwise, we have great talents working on several innovations in India.