Xebia to hire 1,200 people in India by March; eyes emerging tech firms

US-based IT company Xebia is planning to hire 1,200 staff in India by March 2023 as the firm sees growth opportunities in the digital transformation space despite a weak macroeconomic situation, a top company official has said.

Xebia Global CEO Anand Sahay told PTI that all enterprises are looking towards transformation and demand in the segment is high, which is the reason the company is opening up new centres across the globe, including India, and also planning to acquire firms working on artificial intelligence, cloud computing, augmented and virtual reality etc.

He said that based on demand assessment, the company is running short of 1,700 people and even at a conservative estimate Xebia will need 1,200 people by the first quarter of 2023.

"We have started operating in Colombia now. We might start in Chile by the end of the first quarter. We are looking forward to growing our Chennai centre.

"We are about 200 people in Bhopal and we feel that it should go up to at least 500 people there. In Jaipur, we have about 600 people. We are clearly planning for about 1,200 there. We are actually adding more satellite offices also as we speak, be it in Kochi or others in India," Sahay said.

Last week, the company acquired low-code digital transformation firm Netlink Digital Solutions Group (NDS) based out of Michigan. The acquisition will bring about 1,000 additional manpower over a year and help Xebia expand operations in Bhopal and down south, he added.

Talking about the macroeconomic impact, Sahay said that the company is keeping a watch on inflation as it generally has an impact on salaries but talents are not going to switch jobs in 2023 as the market is not going to be as explosive as it was in 2021.

"We don't see customers saying that they don't need software anymore. The area where we are in, mostly innovative software development or something which is disrupting, customers continue to spend money.

"I think, it is more of an internal issue which we have to resolve. When you have inflation of 16 per cent in Poland, what should our salary structures be? So, those are the issues, but not on the business front," he noted.

He said that the way the world is moving, Xebia will need to do more acquisitions in the cloud services segment, expanding its footprint across geographies etc.

"From an emerging technology perspective, we are very, very bullish on Web 3. We are already one of the experts in the world of functionality, which allows us to do serious work in blockchain. We are now also spending some money incubating AR and VR. We think it is important to start playing in that use case. We might do a small acquisition in that space also," he noted.