The contribution of its Indian operations is key in data science, artificial intelligence, analytics, and technology to power the growth and success of Fidelity Investments globally, according to a senior company executive. Boston, Massachusetts headquartered Fidelity is one of the world’s largest asset managers and operates everything from a brokerage to managing a large family of mutual funds and provides investment management, financial planning, wealth management, and retirement planning and advice. In India, it has 7,000 associates working across its Bengaluru and Chennai offices, of the 60,000 it employs globally.
Joanna Rotenberg, Head of personal investing of Fidelity Investments, talking to businessline said that India plays a key role in the global operations of the company. “Our workforce is a scaled-down representation of what occurs in the US. The 7,000 associates are involved across all our lines of business, including data science, artificial intelligence, analytics, and technology,” said Rotenberg. She also said that going forward they expect to have an even bigger presence in the data sciences in the country as a large portion of its data work is done in India at present.
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Pointing out that the team in India is very diverse, Rotenberg said “In fact, there is no distance between our business strategy stateside and our execution. Anybody sitting in any country can seamlessly work due to the smooth integration, which is really impressive.” Talking about the company’s recent announcement of hiring an additional 12,000 workforce globally and whether this would mean strengthening the Indian workforce, she said, “The focus in India, right now, is to make sure that if amongst those 12,000, there are opportunities where those skills map to what we have developed over time, we will rejig our portfolio to make sure we match those needs, instead of saying we’ll add another x number of people.”
The senior executive also said that the company is broadly investing in two areas—renewing its existing offices and upskilling its employees.
“In India, we are involved in renewing all of our offices, and at this time, investments are being made at several locations. We’ve already done one in Bengaluru; another one is going to start, and we’ll do the same thing in Chennai.” Fidelity has a total of four offices in India, with two located in Bengaluru and two in Chennai.
Similarly, she added, “we have also made investments in platforms that our associates may use to continue their learning process, whether it’s for technical skills, domain-specific knowledge, or other abilities. Going forward, we will continue to make them part of the ecosystem.”