MNCs head to tier-2 cities for engg R&D units.

Global in-house centres (GICs) of multinational corporations in India are looking beyond the top six cities to tier-2 locations to expand their engineering R&D operations.

Cities such as Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Coimbatore, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Thiruvanantha-puram, Kochi and Visakhapatnam are the new favourites.

Attractive features

Increasing availability of talent, cost arbitrage, low attrition rates, growing ecosystem of tech start-ups and support from State governments are factors that have contributed to making these tier-2 cities attractive to GICs.

Automation Anywhere, one of the top five global leaders in RPA (robotic process automation) for enterprises, which has engineering R&D centres in San Jose, Bengaluru and Vadodara, is expanding its presence in Vadodara.

“Our Vadodara centre is very important. We have teams involved in product engineering and innovation, customer service and global field support at the centre. Since Vadodara is a big university town, we are able to attract some of the best talent to work with us. Talent from the centre is currently being deployed across 15 locations globally, including the US, Australia, Singapore, West Asia, Japan, France and the UK, and we will continue to expand our operations here,” Milan Sheth, Executive Vice-President - IMEA, Automation Anywhere, told BusinessLine .

Until 2018, all on-boarding of the company’s new employees was done out of Vadodara, which houses 400 of the company’s 1,000-strong R&D talent in India.

HBL