SAP Labs India on Thursday inaugurated its the Gerhard Oswald Innovation Space at the firm’s campus here, built with an investment of €50 million.

The facility is named after a former member of the SAP Executive Board, who played a significant role in driving SAP India’s growth. Spread across 5.15 lakh square feet, the facility will accommodate over 2,500 of the company’s fresh hires and existing employees. SAP has so far invested up to $1 billion in India. “India remains a key location for SAP, and SAP Labs India is the second largest R&D facility for SAP globally,” said Bernd Leukert, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Products & Innovation. “The innovation space will be an environment for further research and innovation, empowering our employees to develop solutions that will help accelerate our customers’ digital transformation journey.”

SAP Labs India will continue to hire freshers and laterals at the same pace in 2017 for its centres across Bengaluru, Gurgaon and Pune. The company has hired 1,000-1,500 engineers over the past two years to support its growth trajectory. At present, the company’s headcount stands at 7,500 with women forming 34 per cent of its workforce, of which, 23.2 per cent hold management positions.

“We are on the growth path, and will continue to hire in domains such as analytics, Cloud, IoT, AI, machine-learning and data science,”s aid Dilipkumar Khandelwal, Managing Director, SAP Labs India and Executive Vice-President - Enterprise Cloud Services. “Until recently, majority of our hires were laterals. In 2016, campus hiring comprised 43 per cent of our total hiring; now the ratio of campus hires to experienced engineers is 60:40. We have increased the percentage of fresh talent because they are digital natives for whom technology is an intrinsic part of their daily lives.”

The new facility incorporates a country theme on every floor, has high oxygen yielding indoor plants, interactive solar power panels, water treatment plants and a lighting management system that harvests daylight. A 38-meter steel pillar is erected to display the handprints of SAP Labs employees as an expression of their solidarity with the company.

Khandelwal said “To foster innovation, we believe it is important to create work environments that promote free thinking, seeds bold ideas and creates opportunities for strong collaboration. We have incorporated elements of both work and play in this facility.”

SAP Startup Studio accelerator programme, launched in June 2016 as a dedicated one-year mentorship programme for seed/early-stage start-ups, will take on a batch of 16 new start-ups this year compared with 7 last year, expanding the 75-seater incubator to 100 seats by the end of 2017.

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