As part of efforts to expand capabilities and further increase services offered in India, AstraZeneca India Private Ltd. announced the opening of a new facility in Chennai yesterday. The new centre is located in the Cambridge tower inside the TRIL campus, and was inaugurated by AstraZeneca’s executive vice president of human resources Fiona Cicconi during her visit to Chennai.

Siva Padmanabhan Head of AstraZeneca’s Global Technology Centre (GTC) in Chennai said, “AstraZeneca Chennai has quickly become an important site for AstraZeneca, growing to more than 2,000 employees since the GTC was established here just two years ago. This new centre is expected to play an important role in global operations and is a fantastic step in our continued growth as a high performing Centre of Excellence.”

Fiona Cicconi, EVP HR, AstraZeneca added, “Being a Great Place to Work is a key strategic pillar for AstraZeneca, and building leadership diversity and a passion for people development are important elements of our people strategy. We are committed to developing our employees in Chennai not only so they can grow in their own careers, but so they can contribute their skills and expertise to other areas of AstraZeneca.”

The Chennai unit will focus on the expansion of IT and non-IT services. With a seating capacity of over 1,000 employees, it will support global operations of the pharma company, and strengthen skill sets of the workers. Key features of this centre include a new innovation hub, smart meeting rooms, collaboration tools like surface hub, opulent library and best in class facilities for employees. David Smoley, chief information officer (CIO), AstraZeneca said, “AstraZeneca’s IT strategy emphasizes the use of leading edge technologies to develop competitive advantage for the company. This includes aggressively adopting “cloud” technology, taking a “mobile first” approach to software engineering and partnering closely with the Business to enable business growth through technology innovation. it is great to see this taking shape in Chennai as we continue to expand the services offered, this is a real success story.”

Technology employees at the Chennai GTC work as part of global teams delivering solutions across the company. They collaborate closely with other technology employees and customers across the world. The GTC in Chennai, India, opened in 2014 and compliments the GTC in Guadalajara, Mexico as well as AstraZeneca IT hubs in UK, USA and Sweden. These locations employ approximately 3,900 AstraZeneca technology employees and run information technology across more than 100 countries where the company has presence.