Hyderabad: Cloud-based software maker Salesforce.com Inc will expand its India operations by opening a centre of excellence in Hyderabad, creating 1,000 jobs and mimicking similar moves by a slew of tech companies.

This will make the south Indian city its biggest hub in India and one of its largest engineering and customer service centres globally. Hyderabad will also become the headquarters for its India operations, said Atul Nanda, senior vice-president of its global customer success arm.

The company currently has offices in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad and will also open a new one in Gurgaon shortly.

Salesforce’s decision to locate a major chunk of its operations in Hyderabad follows moves by other technology giants such as Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. to take up huge office spaces in the city.

Apple Inc. recently opened its first development centre in India in Hyderabad. Amazon and Google will have their biggest campuses outside the US in the southern city. Microsoft Corp. already operates one of its biggest global campuses in Hyderabad, making the city a magnet for technology companies globally.

“When it comes to global functions and deep technology talent, Hyderabad has abundance of that," Nanda said in an interview on Tuesday.

The Hyderabad centre of excellence will provide services such as application support, incident management, escalation management, operation functions and back-end services, he said.

“Salesforce Hyderabad will provide a centre of excellence in the region and play a crucial role in growing our technology and product teams as well as our customer success organization, to meet the needs of our customers worldwide," Parker Harris, co-founder of Salesforce said in a statement.

Salesforce executives declined to share current employment figures in India. The company employs 20,000 employees globally and is San Francisco’s biggest technology employer.

The company, which has been present in India since 2005, counts Bajaj Finserv, InMobi, Snapdeal, PayTM, Urban Ladder and many companies in petrochemicals and cement industries as its clients, its India sales head Arun Balasubramanian said.

Salesforce will lease space in a technology park in Raidurgam locality of Hyderabad for its centre of excellence. It plans to open the facility by the end of this year, he added.

The company entered Hyderabad in 2011 by acquiring cloud-based online conferencing firm Dimdim Inc. for $31 million. Dimdim had offices in Massachusetts and Hyderabad.

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