Japan’s Takeda launches innovation centre in Bengaluru; to hire 750 in 2025

Bengaluru: Takeda Pharmaceutical plans to hire 750 professionals largely in the emerging tech space in the calendar year 2025 (CY25), it announced at the launch of its innovation capability centre (ICC), in Bengaluru, on Wednesday. This is its first ICC, a subset of the global capability centre (GCC), in the Asian region. 

While the Bengaluru facility will focus on research and development (R&D) and digital health solutions, it aims to become a digital biopharmaceutical company in the next 3-5 years. 

“India was a natural choice for Takeda’s first ICC in Asia, and we chose Bengaluru specifically for the talent," said Tilak Banerjee, Head of Takeda ICC - India, during an interaction with DH. Presently, the pharma company has 275 employees mostly in the new technology space including artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and software engineering. While they are looking at employing niche talent, upskilling is also going to be one of its focus areas. 

Takeda is also a beneficiary of Karnataka’s state GCC policy which provides heavy incentives to firms setting up in the state. However, the unit’s role is a little different than traditional GCCs, which focus more on areas like finance or human resources (HR). “So here, instead of different verticals, we concentrate on selective, high-impact offerings like plasma-derived therapy donor systems, developing scalable, multi-language tools for patient support,” said Gabriele Ricci, chief digital transformation officer.

Currently the company has partnerships with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Salesforce and SAP for tech-end solutions. Moreover, the work done in the Bengaluru facility will be used across operations across the countries that they are present in. 

Takeda already has a commercial facility based in Gurgaon and has been operational since 2003, apart from a partnership with Zydus - Zydus Takeda Healthcare Private Limited since 1999. In the past few years, the company has also partnered with Sun Pharma, Cipla, Lupin and Abbott India for certain drugs. 

In the financial year 2023 (FY23), Takeda reported total revenue of 4263.8 billion yen. The company holds more than 180 R&D partnerships worldwide.