IBM, Infosys, and Wipro entered Kochi. Only one emerged unscathed |
At Kochi’s Infopark, it takes less than 10 minutes to walk from one model of the IT industry to another.
Start from the campuses of IT-services giants Infosys and Wipro, which comprise sprawling delivery centres. Here, large teams of engineers keep enterprise software humming for global clients. Think things like migrating old systems to the cloud, debugging applications, and making sure legacy platforms don’t break down.
Just 500m away, that set-up changes. Technology company IBM’s Kochi operations sit inside the World Trade Center tower, a smaller engineering hub where teams work on enterprise AI and hybrid-cloud systems for global clients.
Both centres do enterprise technology work. But they’re built on very different ideas of how that work should be organised.
Infosys and Wipro, which have been in Kerala’s coastal city for nearly two decades, are still working with the age-old maxim that large contracts require large teams. “The margins come from labour arbitrage—hiring engineers in India and delivering work for clients in Europe or the US at scale,” said an Infosys engineer. No wonder Infosys alone employs 5,000–7,000 engineers here.
Then there’s the IBM way. After setting up shop in the southern city in 2022, the company has focused on opening a GenAI Innovation CenterThe New Indian ExpressTech giant IBM opens its biggest Gen-AI Innovation Centre in Kochi, an Automation Innovation Center, and an Ecosystem Incubation Center. All of them are focused on hiring fewer people while improving revenue per employee.
The Ken reported last year on how state governments are creating tech hubs in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Companies’ reason for shifting there was also simple: smaller cities = cheaper infrastructure. Perfect to carry out the wholesale hiring IT-services firms are known for.
For instance, professional-services firm Cognizant is investing over $180 millionReutersCognizant to invest $183 million for new India campus, add 8,000 jobs in a new 8,000-person campus at Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. In 2025, Tata Consultancy Services, too, announced its own Rs 1,300 crore campus in the city, aiming to generate around 12,000 jobs.