By Uwin Lugoda HCL Technologies (HCL), a leading global technology company, recently announced the official opening of its Global Development Centre here in Colombo. The India-based IT giant stated that this new office will be home to world-class infrastructure, multi-layered data and physical security protocols, and high-end systems to support its global customer base. HCL joined hands with the Board of Investment (BOI) in February 2020 to launch its local entity, HCL Technologies Lanka (Pvt.) Ltd., and set up its first delivery centre in the region. Through this entity, HCL will provide services to global clients in the areas of applications and system integration services and infrastructure services. During the virtual inauguration event that took place on 7 September, company officials announced that the company is set to primarily focus on offering next-generation solutions to serve major blue-chip organisations from this new development centre. Post inauguration, HCL Technologies Corporate Vice President Srimathi Shivashankar spoke with The Sunday Morning Business on why they picked Sri Lanka as the location of their first-ever global development centre. Shivashankar stated that one of the biggest reasons for selecting Sri Lanka was its emerging talent pool, which she compared to the one found in India. She explained that one thing they found most favourable about the country was the investment the local stakeholders, Government, and educational institutes had made in the sector. “The success of any IT company lies in the talent pool they select and train. We find that the local talent pool here is very apt for IT services and we witnessed this, so now we want to leverage it,” she noted. She stated that the company also saw that there were already several IT companies here with experienced professionals working for them, who are always looking to move into a global organisation like HCL. So seeing both the fresh and experienced talent pool in the country, she stated that they decided to enter Sri Lanka. Shivashankar stated that while it is premature to comment on what makes the Sri Lankan IT workforce stand out, she claimed that there are certain capabilities and competencies companies look for when hiring IT professionals, such as analytical skills, problem-solving skills, and understanding the IT landscape. She stated that the company saw that these capabilities and competencies were readily available in the country. Speaking on their development programme, she stated that the company works under two philosophies, “Stay Rooted” and “Come Back Home”. Talking about the first philosophy, she explained that it was focused on getting the new talent pool to start their careers here in Sri Lanka with HCL and to continue their career progression, by staying rooted to the company. According to Shivashankar, due to HCL being present in 49 other countries, this career progression does not only apply to Sri Lanka, as they can choose to apply to any of their other global locations and continue their careers within HCL. “We operate out of several other countries too. Therefore, our employees are not only limiting their career progression to Sri Lanka. They get the opportunity to work across the globe, while still rooted in our company.” This first form of development looks at university, Higher National Diploma (HND), and Advanced Level (A/L) graduates from both science and engineering fields. She explained that HCL has started collaborating with Esoft Metro Campus, the country’s largest private sector, higher education network with 40 centres islandwide, to train these graduates. Shivashankar stated that HCL has come up with a special curriculum they want the graduates to follow, and will send down trainers from India to work alongside Esoft to train them for entry-level jobs at HCL. “We have a lot of jobs available for these students and we have already received 1,000-plus entry-level job applications from graduates coming from various colleges across all provinces.” She stated the second philosophy of “Come Back Home” is mainly for the expats who have left the country. She explained that this was their way of encouraging all these IT professionals to come back to the country and restart their careers with HCL. The office in Colombo which currently has a seating capacity of more than 650 employees, already has over 100 new HCL local recruits. By the end of November 2020, it hopes to further add 600-plus seats at this centre. HCL plans to deploy about 3,000 people in the coming three to five years, of which 1,500 employees will start working in Sri Lanka in the next 18 months. Shivashankar stated that they were confident in reaching these targets as they see a lot of talent here and are already attracting some of it. She stated that they believe they will also be able to attract experienced expats back to the country as well. “We need a lot of experienced talent to come back down, because there are specific skills we are looking for, which are not available in Sri Lanka at the moment. I do believe Sri Lanka is a great place for people to restart their careers, and we want to create a lot of excitement for the expats to move back.” Furthermore, she stated that they will adopt a training and hiring model for specific talents that they require, and will bring down Indian talent who have dealt with similar projects so they can help in training the locals to ensure the continuity of projects. “We are still discovering what talent is available here, and we will always hire Sri Lankans for the office here. But if we are to train the locals on ongoing projects in India, for continuity purposes, we will bring Indians down to train them.” She stated that the Sri Lankan office is an extension of what they are doing in India, and therefore will serve the same kind of clients, which include Fortune 500 customers and top Global 2000 customers, doing application development, systems integration, and infrastructure management services. Industry-wise, she stated that they will work with the banking and finance, retail, healthcare, and logistics industries, among a few others. Speaking on the pay scale, Shivashankar stated that it will depend on the local market and what benchmarks the local industry and the big companies here have set. She explained that the Sri Lanka Association for Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM) has already released a benchmark study last year on what the salary for certain skill sets and entry-level jobs in the field would be, which HCL will comply with. “We have not come here to disrupt the local pay scale; we are going with whatever the market norms are.” She especially noted that the Sri Lankan Government has been very helpful in getting the company integrated into the local market. She explained that the most important thing for HCL was having one window through which they could get their process cleared and policies made transparent, and the BOI gave them that opportunity. Shivashankar said that the BOI served as their point of contact to understand local norms and immigration practices, to get all their imported IT equipment through Customs, and for help with various approvals they needed. “What is interesting is, wherever both parties did not understand something, we worked together and helped each other understand it, so I was very happy to see the collaborative nature of the BOI.” Sri Lanka is now joining HCL’s vast network of countries which is spread across the world, with the local IT talent also getting a chance to be a part of a 150,000-strong global workforce.