Databricks to infuse $250M to double its R&D staff in India this year

Databricks is planning to double its research and development (R&D) staff in India by the end of this year in an effort to accelerate the development of new capabilities and large language models (LLMs). “This year, we plan to hire an additional 100-plus R&D engineers to strengthen our capabilities,” Vinod Marur, senior vice president of Engineering at Databricks, said during a media briefing.

The data lakehouse platform provider opened its R&D hub in Bengaluru in 2023, and since then, it has hired around 100 engineers to support the division.

The India R&D team, according to Marur, contributes to the development of LLMs, new capabilities such as the Lakeflow Connect, and aids in infrastructure management for enterprise customers.

Adding more engineers in India is driven by the shortage of AI skillsets globally and the availability of technology talent at scale in the country.

Other R&D centres of the company are located in Amsterdam, Belgrade, Berlin, San Francisco, Mountain View and Seattle.

The R&D team expansion is part of the company’s $250 million planned investment in India for the next three years, which Ed Lenta, SVP for Databricks Asia Pacific & Japan, attributed to its growing customer base, demand for data modernization, and proliferation of generative AI in the country.

To that effect, Lenta said that a majority of the $250 million investment will go into hiring new staffers, including R&D and additional go-to-market and customer success professionals.

“We want to give our Indian customers an amazing experience, and so we’re going to be investing significantly in the go-to-market organization to serve Indian startups and other enterprise customers,” Lenta said during the briefing.

In 2023, Databricks said that it would increase its 250-strong workforce by 50%, taking the staff count to 375. It has already crossed that mark and employs about 500 people in India. Lenta said that Databricks plans to increase its staff count to 750 by the end of the year.

Its customers in India include HDFC Bank, Myntra, Zepto, Dream 11, Air India, Parle, and TVS.

As part of the $250 million investment, the company also plans to scale up its learning and enablement programme via the new Data + AI academy.

The academy aims to train 500,000 partners and customers in India over the next three years on data modernization and generative AI, Lenta said.