Japanese drugmaker Eisai opened its Global Capability Centre in Visakhapatnam on March 17, 2026. The centre sits inside the Eisai Knowledge Centre, the company’s manufacturing and research campus in the city, and will act as the group’s information technology hub. It starts by standardising Eisai’s global IT infrastructure operations and will take on more work over time.
Founded in 1941 as Nihon Eisai and headquartered in Tokyo, Eisai researches, makes and sells prescription medicines. It has more than 40 subsidiaries and over 11,000 employees. For the fiscal year that ended in March 2026, its consolidated revenue came to 825.4 billion yen, or about 5.4 billion US dollars.
What the centre will do
The centre brings the design and running of Eisai’s internal IT services in house. It will deliver standardised services from a secure environment and lead global IT functions, which frees regional IT teams to concentrate on transformation work specific to their own markets.
In its first phase the team will standardise global infrastructure operations. Cybersecurity, data and analytics, and operational applications will follow in stages as business needs grow. Eisai has said it intends to recruit and develop IT talent locally and offer long term careers, though it has not put a number on hiring.
Why Visakhapatnam
The choice builds on what Eisai already has in the city. Its Knowledge Centre opened in 2009 inside the special economic zone at Jawaharlal Nehru Pharma City, on a campus of about 50 acres, and has since served as a core hub for global production and process research. Adding the IT centre to an established site gives it ready infrastructure and a known operating base. Andhra Pradesh is also pushing Visakhapatnam as a technology destination through its New IT City plan, which includes special economic zone status, data centres and AI hubs.
Eisai’s India footprint
Eisai incorporated Eisai Pharmaceuticals India in 2007 as a wholly owned subsidiary, and it calls itself the first Japanese drugmaker with a fully owned subsidiary in the Indian market. Commercial operations run from Mumbai, while Visakhapatnam handles drug substance production, R&D and finished dosage manufacturing. The Knowledge Centre represented an investment of about five billion yen when it was completed and was the first Eisai site to combine ingredient and formulation manufacturing with research.
What it signals
Most capability centres in India land in the big metros. Eisai’s move shows that an existing plant can anchor technology work in a smaller city, and it gives Visakhapatnam a credible early tenant as Andhra Pradesh tries to build an IT base on the coast. It is also a clear case of a drugmaker choosing to own its core IT operations rather than leave them with outside vendors.
At a glance
- Home country: Japan
- Sector: Healthcare and Life Sciences
- City: Visakhapatnam
- Date: March 2026
- Status: Operational
- Scale: IT hub, headcount not disclosed
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