Hapag-Lloyd opens Technology Center in Chennai
The Hapag-Lloyd Technology Center (HLTC) is being launched in Chennai, a port city in eastern India. There, a team of 180 IT professionals will develop innovative software solutions for the maritime industry. With their expertise, these new colleagues will strengthen Hapag-Lloyd’s IT capabilities.
Housed in the World Trade Center Chennai, HLTC will be operated as part of a joint venture that Hapag-Lloyd established with the Indian technology company Solverminds in June this year. As one of the world’s leading providers of management solutions for the maritime industry, Solverminds has been working closely with Hapag-Lloyd since 2017 in the areas of IT operations support and software development. “In the Hapag-Lloyd Technology Center, we will be bundling our strengths and competences,” says Donya-Florence Amer, CIO/CHRO at Hapag-Lloyd. “HLTC will thereby make an important contribution to our technological transformation. We are continuing to expand our global IT presence and are able to provide industry-leading software solutions.” The goal is to grow the new technology center in the next few years. “In the medium term, we plan to increase the number of talents in our HLTC to between 300 and 400 specialists – thereby also grow the talent base and attractiveness of the whole company going forward,” Amer notes.
The Hapag-Lloyd Technology Center will be led by a four-person management team comprising Balamurugan Palanivelu (CEO) and Venkatesh Balaji Ramamoorthy (CTO) from Solverminds as well as Vaishali Shetty (CHRO) and Sameer Saxena (CFO) from Hapag-Lloyd. “As a port city, Chennai has always been an important business hub and, in recent years, it has become a major centre for software solutions,” says Balamurugan Palanivelu. “All these factors – port, business, software – offer us the perfect environment for our technology center and for developing smart software solutions. We look forward to intensely interacting with Hapag-Lloyd’s global IT teams.”
Chennai will become the third Hapag-Lloyd IT Technology Center alongside Gdansk (Poland), and Hamburg (Germany). The opening of the Technology Center in Chennai marks an important step for Hapag-Lloyd and shows that the company sees great potential in India, also with a look at tapping the enormous market for highly qualified IT talent it provides. The country has evolved into a hub for cutting-edge technology and boasts a booming IT industry and an excellently trained workforce. With 1.4 billion residents, India is the most populous country in the world. It numbers among the fastest-growing economies in the G20 group and has one of the world’s largest software industries.
In its sales office, its Quality Service Center, its Global Capability Center and its Technology Center, Hapag-Lloyd employs more than 3,000 people in India.