EagleView Technologies, a US-based technology provider of data analytics derived from aerial imagery and computer vision, opened its biggest R&D centre in Bengaluru on Monday.
The company plans to invest ₹350 crore in India over the next 24 months and onboard 500 product innovators and engineers by December next year, a top executive told BusinessLine .
Located within Bengaluru’s Pritech Park SEZ, Bellandur, the 80,000 sq ft facility is EagleView’s third R&D centre. Its two existing R&D centres with a total headcount of 180 are located in Bellevue, Washington and in Rochester, New York. While the former is focussed on Machine Learning and Applications development, the latter is focussed on the hardware side of the company’s business.
“Our goal is to globalise the business from India, not to build a back office to support the global business. In the next 24 months, we will invest ₹350 crore in India,” said Rishi Daga, CEO, EagleView Technologies.
“Our aspiration is to source and recruit top talent up to 500 people by next year-end, including product innovators who will work with our engineers to create global products, go-to-market experts who will market to our customers around the world and the strongest engineering talent that we can find. Fifteen to 20 per cent of our hires will comprise freshers who will be trained in-house for periods ranging from 3-9 months,” he added.
Overseas plan
The company is expanding into Europe, Australia, where it began operations eight months ago and the UK where it has been operating since the last three months. It is also looking to foray into South America and West Asia. “We want the best talent in India to come in and help us scale the business” said Daga.
Globally, EagleView has 850 employees and 1,000 contract staff. The $200-million plus company serves 50,000 customers in the US and Canada.
In the US which is its primary market, the company utilises proprietary high-resolution aerial imagery through planes and drones combined with the application of computer vision and machine learning to generate on-demand, real time information, insights and analytics to serve customers across the Insurance, Government, Energy and Roofing sectors.
“We have 10,000 employees from 26 of our portfolio companies which are operating in India today and are on track to grow that to 15,000 in the next 36-48 months. Today, we are inaugurating the EagleView R&D centre in India. While our portfolio companies separately hired over 1,500 people in India last year, we want to create an enterprise-class hiring mechanism with the right partners who can work with us for hiring and training employees for our companies in Pune, Bengaluru and Gurugram,” said Robert F Smith, founder, chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, an investment firm focussed on software, data and technology-enabled businesses and EagleView’s primary investor.
EagleView claims to have over 200 million users of its software globally. Last week, the company captured its one-billionth image.