Japanese companies are rushing to tap India's wealth of highly skilled IT talent, with the latest being flea-market app operator Mercari, which established a technology development center in Bengaluru in late June.
Mercari's center will open in July in the south Indian city, considered the country's answer to Silicon Valley, with an outlay of 30 million rupees ($380,000) in capital investment. The company aims to hire between 50 and 60 people within the first 12 months to develop services provided in Japan and the United States, it said.
Mercari's entry into India comes after many other Japanese companies opened IT operations there during the pandemic. They include MUFG Bank, which started a subsidiary for system development in February 2020, and Sony Group Corp., which opened a center for developing artificial intelligence in July 2020.