Hospitality major Marriott International has announced that it is establishing a new Marriott Tech Accelerator, the company’s first global capability centre (GCC), in Hyderabad.
This is perhaps the first-ever GCC by a hospitality major being set up in India. While the company did not provide details on the size of the centre, senior officials of the state government said the company will hire 300 people by the first quarter of CY2025.
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The Marriott Tech Accelerator is an expansion of the company’s global technology team and will support Marriott’s tech infrastructure, engineering capacity, next-gen solutions, and security capabilities across its global enterprise in 141 countries and territories.
“We have chosen to establish the Marriott Tech Accelerator in Hyderabad, India, because of its world-class talent and strong reputation as a major IT hub. We appreciate the close collaboration with the Telangana government on this project and look forward to expanding our best-in-class technology workforce,” said Drew Pinto, executive vice president and chief revenue and technology officer, Marriott International.
Duddila Sridhar Babu, minister of information technology, electronics, communications, and industries, Telangana, said that Telangana has emerged as a global tech leader with over 200 GCCs driving business transformation. Babu also added that going forward, the state government will introduce incentive schemes to attract more such players.
“So far, we have not provided any special incentives. We have always assured the industry of the best support from us. However, we are working on a model to attract more such players. It is still in the works, and we expect to share some details by the first quarter of next year,” said Babu.
He also added, “Our talent pool includes over 1 million GCC-ready tech professionals and 350,000 AI and chip designers, with an annual influx of 250,000 engineers. This new GCC advances our vision of making Telangana a global hub for AI, data science, and IoT.”
This announcement builds on 25 years of Marriott doing business in India, which began in 1999 with the opening of the Goa Marriott Resort and Spa. Earlier this year, the company celebrated its 150th hotel in India, the Marriott Katra Resort and Spa. The company’s expansion plans in India are expected to take its room count from around 29,000 rooms across 17 brands as of October 2024, to over 42,000 rooms in the coming years.
The decision to set up the Marriott Tech Accelerator in Hyderabad marks a pivotal step in the state’s ongoing efforts to attract GCC investments from a broader range of industries. This strategic initiative aims to engage large multinationals from diverse sectors, emphasizing the unique benefits of establishing GCCs in Telangana, where a skilled talent pool and robust infrastructure are readily available. Marriott will commence full-scale GCC operations by Q1 2025.
First Published: Oct 03 2024 | 7:08 PM IST
