UBS. Zurich Insurance. Novartis. Hitachi Energy. Four of Switzerland’s most powerful companies have quietly built some of their largest global operations in India. Nobody is talking about it. They should be.
Switzerland is not a country that makes noise about its India strategy. It does not hold summits or announce bilateral investment targets in round numbers. It simply builds. Quietly, methodically, and over decades.
Four of Switzerland’s largest companies have built operations in India that are not peripheral to their global businesses. They are central to them.
UBS — From Pune to Hyderabad
UBS incorporated its India entity in 1996 and opened its first Pune technology facility in 2015. What began as a service delivery operation grew steadily, absorbing more complex work, adding engineering capability, and expanding headcount year after year. By the time the Hyderabad GCC opened in February 2026, UBS already had over 15,000 professionals across Mumbai, Pune, and Hyderabad. Its India technology and operations entity, UBS Business Solutions India, handles technology, finance, and operational services for the bank’s global businesses and generated ₹7,720 crore in revenue for the financial year ending March 2025. The Hyderabad GCC is not the beginning of UBS’s India story. It is the next chapter of one already three decades long.
The Hyderabad centre plans to hire nearly 3,000 professionals over the next two years, focusing on financial technology, AI, digital operations, and advanced banking platforms including risk management infrastructure, trading systems, analytics platforms, and regulatory automation.
Matthias Schacke, Head of India Service Company and Group Technology Officer at UBS, said at the inauguration: “Hyderabad continues to be an important growth location for UBS, thanks to its strong talent pool, supportive policies, and excellent infrastructure. We look forward to further expanding our tech capabilities, including AI, while enhancing our operations footprint in the location.”
UBS posted a net profit of $1.2 billion for the fourth quarter of 2025, up 56% from a year earlier. Invested assets across the group exceeded $7 trillion for the first time. The Hyderabad GCC is being built from a position of financial strength.
Zurich Insurance — Coming Back to Build What Was Not Possible Before
Zurich Insurance’s relationship with India is older than most people realise. The company had a branch office in India before the nationalisation of the entire insurance industry in 1972 forced it to exit. More than five decades later it returned, this time not as an insurer selling policies but as a technology company building global capability.
Zurich re-entered India through a joint venture, Zurich Kotak General Insurance, established in 2024 in partnership with Kotak Mahindra Bank, employing 1,500 people across digital development, commercial insurance underwriting, and product development. The April 2026 Hyderabad GCC is a separate and more significant commitment, a dedicated global technology centre with a mandate that goes far beyond the Indian insurance market. Together the two operations give Zurich a growing two-track India presence: one serving the Indian market, the other serving its global business.
The centre was designed AI-native from inception, with AI workflows embedded into the operating model from day one. It covers cloud and platform engineering, data science, application development, cybersecurity, and core business operations for Zurich’s 82 million customers across 200 countries. Teams own full solution lifecycles.
Cara Morton, CEO of Zurich Global Businesses and Operations, said: “India is a key talent market for Zurich, and Hyderabad stands out for its depth of engineering expertise and innovation. This centre reflects a shift in how we build for the future, strengthening our global technology and AI capabilities while giving highly skilled professionals the opportunity to work on solutions that make a real impact for our customers around the world.”
Zurich appointed Amit Kalra, with 23 years of leadership experience across insurance, reinsurance, and financial services including Swiss Re, as Global Head of Zurich Capability Centres effective July 2026. He will be based in India and oversee all of Zurich’s GCC locations globally.
Novartis — 24 Years. One Consistent Bet. The Largest Pharma GCC in India.
Novartis started in Hyderabad in 2001 with a small team at a time when most global pharma companies were using India for generic manufacturing, not drug development. Over the next two decades it made a series of decisions that progressively deepened India’s role, adding clinical operations, then biostatistics, then regulatory affairs, then advanced analytics, then AI and digital health platforms.
Today that 2001 team has become more than 9,000 employees, approximately 11% of Novartis’s entire global workforce. The annual operating cost of the India centre is approximately $400 million. Indian teams contribute to nearly every molecule that reaches late-stage development at Novartis, covering clinical operations, biostatistics, regulatory affairs, and advanced analytics. Around 2,800 employees focus specifically on drug development across Hyderabad and Mumbai.
The India hub spans three centres across two cities, two in Hyderabad at the Novartis Corporate Center and Genome Valley, and one in Mumbai. India is now fully integrated into Novartis’s global drug development model.
Dr Sadhna Joglekar, Senior Vice President and Head of the Development India Hub at Novartis, said: “It is where Novartis integrates science, digital, finance, technology platforms, and global services to drive transformation.”
Twenty-four years. One consistent bet. The largest pharma GCC in India.
Hitachi Energy — 75 Years of Building India’s Power Infrastructure
- One factory in Vadodara. One country, one product line, one mandate.
Hitachi Energy, then operating as Hindustan Electric, started in India when the country’s power infrastructure was being built from scratch. Over the decades the business changed names, Hindustan Brown Boveri, ABB Power Grids, Hitachi ABB Power Grids, but the India commitment never changed. It deepened.
Seventy-five years later Hitachi Energy has 19 manufacturing units across eight locations, a $10 billion installed base, over 7,500 employees, and the largest energy technology and innovation centre in the world, in Chennai. More than half of India’s HVDC links run on its technology. Around 80% of metro rail systems in India deploy its power automation. Every third Shatabdi and every second Rajdhani runs on its traction transformers.
The Chennai Global Technology and Innovation Centre spans 300,000 square feet including 50,000 square feet of dedicated laboratory space. It houses more than 2,500 energy transition technologists and executes over 1,000 projects annually across 40 countries.
Claudio Facchin, CEO of Hitachi Energy, said at the Chennai inauguration in October 2023: “This centre in Chennai is a strategic investment that accelerates innovation, digitalisation, and engineering capability to support our customers in advancing the world’s energy system to be more sustainable, flexible, and secure. It further reinforces our commitment in India as a critical hub ready to take on the challenges of the transformation of the future global energy system through electrification.”
N Venu, Managing Director and CEO of Hitachi Energy India and South Asia, said: “The new Global Technology and Innovation Centre supports our vision of made in India for India and the world. Through diversity and collaboration, it is geared toward delivering real-impact in research and development and end-to-end engineering of global projects.”
In May 2026 Hitachi Energy India announced a further ₹2,000 crore investment in a greenfield large power transformer facility in Gujarat, taking cumulative capital expenditure to ₹4,000 crore across 19 factories. The company closed the year with a record order backlog of ₹29,600 crore.
Seven and a half decades of building India’s power infrastructure. And still investing.
What Both Sides Are Building
For India the Swiss connection represents something specific. These are not companies chasing a market or testing a hypothesis. They are companies that have made structural decisions about where to build capability, where to place leadership, and where to commit capital, and chosen India consistently. That consistency creates depth that cannot be replicated quickly. Novartis’s 9,000-person drug development operation was built through two dozen years of incremental investment. Hitachi Energy’s Chennai centre runs 1,000 projects annually across 40 countries because 75 years of manufacturing investment created the talent ecosystem that makes it possible.
For Switzerland the returns are equally clear. India gives these companies something they cannot find anywhere else at this scale, engineering depth, AI talent, and a workforce capable of owning consequential global work rather than simply executing it.
None of these companies came to India for quick returns. They came, stayed, and raised the ceiling of what they trusted India to do. India, for Swiss business, is not a market to be served or a cost base to be managed. It is a place to build the future of the company. Quietly, methodically, and over decades
Sources —
- UBS official press release — February 2026 — ubs.com
- UBS India entity — MCA filings / Tracxn FY2025
- UBS second Pune office press release — ubs.com — October 2018
- Zurich Insurance official press release — April 2026 — zurich.com
- Zurich history page — zurich.com/about-us/history-and-heritage
- Novartis Development India Hub — novartis.com/in-en/about/development
- Hitachi Energy official press release — October 5, 2023 — hitachienergy.com
- Hitachi Energy India page — hitachienergy.com/in/en/company/hitachi-energy-india
- Hitachi Energy 75th anniversary — October 7, 2024 — hitachi.com
- Hitachi Energy India investor communications — May 2026
