Telstra expands India operations with new lab, innovation hubs

Australian telecom major Telstra is expanding operations in India with the launch of two new innovation and capabilities centres in Pune and Hyderabad and a product engineering lab in Bengaluru.  

Telstra, which operates as a global capability centre (GCC) out of India, started operations in Bengaluru in July 2019 to drive technology and innovation to support global operations. The new capability centres in Pune and Hyderabad will be the second and third centres after Bengaluru.   

The new centres are part of Telstra’s strategy to tap the Indian talent to drive global technology work out of India. The three new facilities, spread over 1 lakh sq. ft., will become “hubs of innovation and will further strengthen Telstra’s efforts to diversify talent acquisition in India,” the company said.   

“At Telstra India, our ambition is to be an epicentre of talent and innovation that drives Telstra’s digitally connected future. Our expansion in India reiterates our commitment to empower an innovative ecosystem by providing relevant opportunities to our people, co-creating with partners to bring alive cutting-edge technology and solutions for our businesses and customers,” said N.T. Arunkumar, managing director and country head, Telstra India.  

Telstra said the newly-launched innovation and capability centres in India will provide technologists an opportunity to use technology, automation, and innovation to solve some of the world’s critical technological challenges in areas of internet of things (IoT), 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and other new-age technologies.  

The capability centre in Hyderabad will act as a hub of specialized high-performance software engineering (HPSE) and will encompass a deep technology consumer software engineering team that will directly innovate for the customers of Telstra. Similarly, the Pune centre will have a blend of operations and technology teams who will focus on enhancing Telstra’s existing domain expertise in the telecom business. They will also work on developing application software engineering to enable business process change.  

The network and product engineering lab in India is aimed at accelerating innovation in next-gen mobile technology testing. The 8,500 sq. ft. lab will specialize in creating an end-to-end 4G and 5G environment where testing of 4G/5G mobile handsets and IoT devices of various original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) will take place. Some of the other focus areas of the lab include testing devices on 5G network in a virtual environment, developing software for smart devices, and testing multiple devices.   

Telstra in India has expanded to over 1,000 people from 200 people when it started in 2019. “In coming months, we will be doubling our capability and also plan to leverage the partner ecosystem for joint collaboration,” said Arunkumar.