The banking major HSBC plans to establish a campus in the city large enough to consolidate the operations of its Global Service Centres that now function from four locations here and together employs 7,000 people.
It will be in the Cyberabad area, Subir Mehra, Head of Global Service Centres of HSBC, said about the location adding that the developer will be finalised over the next few months.
Home to several tech companies, Cyberabad denotes a number of areas, including the Financial District, Gachibowli, Hi-Tec City, Madhapur, that already has campuses of several leading firms, including that of Microsoft, Wipro and Infosys.
Amazon, Google and Apple are either present or planning a facility there.
The proposed campus for HSBC Global Service Centre will be “ours, but not necessarily owned by us”, he said, adding that it would provide multiple benefits by way of facilitating more engagement among the employees, shared infrastructure and on the transportation and security fronts.
Similar centres
Other cities in India hosting similar centres of HSBC are Chennai, Bengaluru, Visakhapatnam and Kolkata. Hyderabad will be the first location where a campus is being considered.
The HSBC has Global Service Centres in seven countries with a headcount of 50,000, making the network one of the largest BPOs in the world.
In India, HSBC as a group has employed 37,000 people, a good chunk of that at the Global Service Centres.
“We are constantly adding people,” he said, adding the headcount was 33,000 in 2015. The quality of work undertaken at the centres in India, Mr. Mehra said, was substantially going up the value chain. From simple data entry about 15 years ago, they now deal in analytics, financial crime monitoring and investigation, completing KYC (know your customer) files, account opening for retail and corporate customers and payment processing. “Almost any activity that can be done from an offshore location, we have started doing [in India] or considering it,” he said, adding equity research is the latest addition for which a pilot project with a small team was launched recently in Bengaluru.
Sustainable energy
Bengaluru will also be the next location in the country where the Global Service Centre will migrate to sustainable energy.
Such facilities in Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam already meet a good part of their energy requirements from solar power, well above the target that 40% of the energy requirement of HSBC group globally should be met through renewable sources by 2020.
The HSBC has signed PPA with a solar power plant in Jadcherla, Telangana (installed capacity of 10 MW) and in Eluru, Andhra Pradesh (2.2 MW plant). It has led to 70% of the power consumption of the Hyderabad centre being sustainable, while it is 50% in the case of the Visakhapatnam facility, he said.
