India Becomes the Epicentre of UKG’s 50% Global R&#038;D Operations
HR and workforce management leader UKG recently expanded its operations in India with the launch of a new centre of excellence (CoE) in Pune. The centre will drive innovation across UKG’s global products and services, tapping into the city’s growing pool of technology talent. The office in Pune, which can initially accommodate up to 250 employees, will focus on advancing UKG’s AI-powered workforce management platforms and solutions. This expansion follows UKG’s wider growth in India, where it now employs at least 3,000 people across its existing offices in Noida, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. In an interview with AIM, Nitin Chandel, group vice president and India country manager at UKG, said that the company’s platform development is heavily powered out of India, with a significant portion of its global innovation and R&D efforts rooted in the country. About half of UKG’s global R&D operations are currently happening in India, he added. The core parts of the company’s products—from databases to workforce management solutions—are being built and evolved by teams in India, Suresh Vittal, chief product officer at UKG, told AIM. The CoE based in Pune will be an integral part of the company’s product and technology ecosystem, which will help scale faster, innovate and deliver outcomes not just for Indian customers but also for the 80,000 organisations that rely on UKG solutions around the world. UKG’s India Base “Our flagship workforce management solution, including capabilities like scheduling, are built out of India. Similarly, our product Ready, which is our SMB product—an all-in-one platform of payroll, workforce management and human capital management—is largely developed out of India,” Vittal added. Responding to the broader perception of the work being done in India, Chandel highlighted a clear distinction between high-value research and development and lower-value back-office operations. He explained that while the top 2% of product companies are heavily engaged in core R&D activities in India, a large portion of additional work across the industry still involves routine back-office tasks. Meanwhile, the company is planning to hire over 500 professionals across engineering, product, and customer-facing roles in Pune by the end of the year. UKG has also launched hiring drives across South India and other regions, as part of its commitment to building a diverse and innovative workforce. According to Chandel, UKG is currently focused on hiring talent with deep expertise in specific areas, mainly deep platform, deep AI, deep data science and deep business analytics skill sets. He explained that while the company continues to hire standard developers to build out the platform, there is a strong emphasis on data-related roles, as data is fundamental to AI development. “Data is big because all the AI happens on data,” he added. Alongside these niche areas, UKG is also recruiting crucial roles such as UX engineers and full-stack engineers to support broader development needs. However, the immediate priority remains on specialised skills critical to the organisation’s growth. Furthermore, to connect with young talent, UKG recently sponsored the tech fest at MKSSS’s Cummins College of Engineering for Women in Pune. UKG Bringing Innovation Through Agents The goal for UKG is to make technology invisible and intuitive for users. “We’re aiming at using AI and agents to deliver deeply personalised experiences for the employees that allow them to be more productive without having to learn new tools,” Chandel mentioned. Last year, the company launched UKG Bryte AI agents, an umbrella platform designed to introduce AI-driven agents into the workplace. “We believe in this category of workforce management and human capital management. Thinking about everything from hire to retirement, the journey that an employee at the workforce goes through, we think this entire landscape is rich with AI opportunities,” Vittal said. The Bryte AI agents are built on a vast foundation of operational data, positioning UKG uniquely in the market. “Our Bryte AI agents are built uniquely on this massive data moat where we process nearly a trillion dollars of payroll, we take care of almost 30 billion shifts a year, we are helping companies hire more than 30 million jobs a year.” As a result, UKG is in a position to train models that are at the intersection of the function—workforce management, human capital management, or payroll administration—and the verticals—healthcare, retail, manufacturing, service, and delivery. This depth of data enables UKG’s AI agents to be highly effective, helping to automate traditional, low-value tasks and allowing employees to focus on higher-value work. “This means these agents are super effective and really well trained in automating a lot of the traditional low-value activity to allow people to focus on the higher value stuff,” Vittal added Among the Bryte AI agents are tools such as Frontline Assist, Explain My Pay, and Compliance Management agents. These AI-driven solutions are designed to simplify workforce operations. “These agents simplify how the workforce operates. This workforce is coming in to actually get work done, not to manage their time, their payroll, insurance, or their retirement funds and so on. We have been introducing agents to help solve a lot of those equations, so the workforce can actually focus on what they are best equipped to do—which is deliver value to their end customers,” Vittal explained. The past year saw the launch of the Continuous Compliance agent, a particularly impactful solution for payroll administrators. This allows payroll administrators to constantly check all the changes in legal language or company policy updates, or state-level updates that keep happening on a regular basis and then update other stakeholders in the process involved.
“The core parts of the company’s products—from databases to workforce management solutions—are being built and evolved by teams in India.”
“The core parts of the company’s products—from databases to workforce management solutions—are being built and evolved by teams in India.”
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Shalini is a senior tech journalist, exploring the latest advancements in AI. When she's not reporting on the latest innovations, you can find her immersed in her next literary adventure.