Takeda unveils innovation centre in Bengaluru, to hire 750 people

BENGALURU: Japanese biopharmaceutical company Takeda opened an innovation capability centre (ICC) in Bengaluru, leveraging the city’s tech talent pool to build core digital skills in-house. This flagship facility joins the company's existing centres in Slovakia and Mexico, which together employ about 650 people. Takeda plans to expand its workforce from the present 275 employees to over 750 by this year-end at its Bengaluru centre.“India was a natural choice for Takeda’s first ICC in Asia,” said Tilak Banerjee, head of Takeda's ICC India. “This strategic commitment will generate new jobs and further the company’s mission of delivering life-transforming treatments to patients.”The company is hiring across tech roles, including data architects, cloud and AI specialists, even as it has set up autonomous pods assigned to specific programmes. Each pod combines various capabilities to enhance platform development through digital processes. “That’s the reason why we also have proximity with the business because it's not just technology, but it's business process redesign and creating an experience for our patients. We are experiencing a new phase of business growth -- we have six products in Phase 3 and three of them are going to be launched in 2026. We require new skills and capabilities that we don't have in the organisation,” said Gabriele Ricci, chief data and technology officer (CDTO) at Takeda. The biopharma firm accelerates R&D efforts across three areas -- innovative biopharma, plasma-derived therapies (PDT), and vaccines.Takeda's India ICC operates as a division of Takeda's Data, Digital & Technology (DD&T) organisation. It specialises in delivering services focused on platform creation, system development, software engineering, application building, and AI-driven technologies. The India centre will leverage AI and GenAI to enhance efficiency and predictive analytics in healthcare. It will also focus on device engineering and application virtualisation to drive innovation in product development and patient-centric solutions. The centre will accelerate its efforts in data science and visualisation to enable data-driven decision-making for improved patient outcomes.When asked about the company reducing its dependency on IT firms in favour of moving work in-house, Ricci said, “We continue to use our partners when we need to flex and delegate to them non-critical skills and capabilities. However, whatever is critical for our future, we want to maintain it in-house as it is also an opportunity to grow those skills and be future-ready. We aim to have more than 50% of the skills and capabilities in-house while collaborating with technology partners to supplement the remaining requirements. I expect that in the next few years, the next CDTO in Takeda will come from an ICC because it is such a rich environment for talent,” he added.Wipro counted Takeda as one of its large customers. Last year, Cognizant expanded its partnership, supporting Takeda in transforming modern infrastructure and application management approaches, but also through a BOTT (build, operate, transform and transfer) model.