UiPath expands R&D footprint in India, adds 100 new employees through recent acquisition

US-headquartered enterprise automation firm UiPath has expanded its India footprint to two additional cities — Pune and Jaipur. This growth follows UiPath’s acquisition of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven inventory management firm Peak, whose R&D team operates out of these locations, UiPath’s chief technology officer Raghu Malpani told TechCircle in an interview.

With this acquisition, UiPath adds about 100 employees to its existing India headcount of up to 500. UiPath acquired Manchester-based Peak to enhance its vertical AI solutions strategy. 

“Peak has developed strong capabilities in inventory management and pricing agents, which aligned well with our vision and talent needs. We saw great synergies through this partnership," said Malpani, adding that we believe the future of automation lies not just in platforms, but also in specialised vertical agents, and Peak offers us a strong entry point into this space.

He said that going forward, UiPath will focus on vertical AI specialistion through internal capability building and strategic partnerships. 

UiPath’s India team is its largest engineering and product hub outside of Bucharest. According to Malpani, the India presence is not driven by cost arbitrage but by the depth and quality of talent. He noted that the team plays a critical role in building foundational components, particularly in the area of integrations.

“In enterprise automation, the systems need to interact with each other to operate efficiently. Many companies have over 100 systems, and our team here builds and manages the services that connect them all. This is the foundational scaffolding. On top of that, we layer agentic automation, which is just one part of the broader automation stack.”

Malpani, along with other senior executives of UiPath, was in Bengaluru earlier this month to launch UiPath Platform for agentic automation. This open platform enhances workflows by allowing the deployment and management of AI agents, robots, and human agents. AI agents are systems that use AI to autonomously perform tasks, make decisions, and interact with the environment. These systems have quickly emerged as the new frontier in AI innovation.

In this context, Malpani said that UiPath is moving beyond robotic process automation (RPA) to agentic automation. While RPA is based on deterministic rules, agentic automation combines agents and robots, while having a human in the loop, so solve business problems faster. “Agentic automation involves breaking down a larger business process into a series of discrete tasks. Tasks that are deterministic and rule-based can be automated using robots, while those that are non-deterministic are handled by AI agents,” explained Malpani.

UiPath is implementing agentic automation across a range of use cases, including invoice processing, claims handling, and medical record summarisation. There is a strong application in customer care and support, where a combination of agents and robots helps address complex automation challenges.

“It’s still a bit early to talk about concrete return on investments (RoI), as we’ve only just launched the general availability version of our platform. However, the initial traction has been very promising, and we’re confident that agentic automation will be a strong tailwind, possibly even a major accelerator for our growth,” noted Malpani.

He added that the company is utilising this agentic AI platform within its internal processes. “Looking ahead, we're now focused on 'agentifying' the company itself. We're passionate about transforming more and more day-to-day tasks through agentic AI. Think of agents as trusted allies working alongside you to boost productivity. At UiPath, everyone, regardless of their role, stands to benefit from agentic automation, and that’s our next big push,” said Malpani. 

The Center of Excellence at UiPath is dedicated to identifying and executing automation opportunities across the company. Malpani added that it has helped UiPath operate with a much leaner footprint than it otherwise would.

Notably, UiPath laid off 10% of its 4,000 employees last year in June. This announcement came shortly after CEO  Daniel Dines took over in his new role, in the same month. The company at the time said that these layoffs were done to drive operational efficiency and maintain topline growth.