CEO: Why Zensar picked Durham for our 200-job operation

May 14, 2018

Indian technology firm Zensar picked Durham over competing sites in Georgia, Texas, Indiana and California for its first North American customer delivery center.

 

That’s according to CEO Sandeep Kishore speaking after his company announced plans to bring up to 200 jobs to Bull City.

 

Quietly, his local team – between 60 and 70 employees today – is already moving into its new space on Meridian Parkway.

 

“We’ll have 100 people pretty soon, all local hires,” he says. “That location fit all the bills.” Zensar was lured to the site because of its proximity to key clients, he says. That, coupled with “great support” from the city of Durham, helped seal the deal.

 

But the company must move quickly to fill the seats, he says. Its local customers are mostly in the technology manufacturing space, and projects are picking up – particularly in analytics, Internet of Things and cybersecurity.

 

“These are active programs, active pursuits,” he says. “That’s the reason we want to hire quickly.”

 

Zensar, which has about 1,400 employees working in North America today, is planning additional customer delivery centers in other metros across the U.S. Kishore says the plan is to use the Durham center as a model for those yet-to-be-determined locations.

 

In the meantime, it’s hiring heavily, hoping to be at 200 Durham employees in the next several quarters.

 

Kishore says Zensar is looking for recent grads to train, as well as senior level positions he expects to recruit from the local market. Right now, the firm is hiring in analytics, “particularly data campaigns, marketing automation, cloud, those areas.”

 

Kishore, a veteran of HCL Technologies, joined the firm in 2016, taking over for Ganesh Natarajan.

 

At the time, the company said his hire meant the firm was “gearing itself to join the big league of Indian IT firms.”

 

At the close of the quarter ended March 30, the firm had grown its revenue by 5.8 percent year-over-year, from $455.6 million to $482.2 million.

 

And the earnings report, without being specific, mentions several wins in the U.S., such as a “digital commerce deal for a prominent American retail chain” and a “contract to create Supply Chain Contract Digital Platform (CDP) for [a] large American hi-tech corporation.”

 

The firm is leasing 8,000 square feet on Meridian Parkway, "with the flexibility to expand an additional 10,000 at the same location as we continue to grow," according to a spokeswoman.