Wilco acquired its Hyderabad operations, with about 100 technical and managerial staff, from US investment bank DE Shaw in June 1999. Since then it has raised the headcount to 260, but now says it expects that figure to hit 1,000 within three years as it invests ú30 million ($42.83 million) in the centre.
Indian developers work on the functional development of Wilco’s core products, such as the GLOSS transaction processing system, its internet broker system as well as ongoing development of Wilco’s architecture.
Re-architect
The latest architectural development is a radical change that will bring the transaction capabilities of the GLOSS transaction processing system up to at least one million trades per day. Part of the key to this improvement is that the new platform will be database independent.
Functionality for the new platform is being developed on a component basis. The first components will be available mid-2001, with order and transaction management being the first to be implemented.
“The majority of the R&D work was actually done in London, but going forward the Hyderabad developers will be more and more involved,” says London-based Marketing Manager Mike West.
Wilco has global clients such as Merril Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, and West says that as the financial industry in general is seeing a trend towards higher volumes and lower margins, scalable systems will become increasingly important.
The Hyderabad centre is also the secure and controlled base for Wilco’s outsourcing service – Securities Data Management. The service uses a range of tools to automate the extraction, transformation and cleansing of data relating to securities operations. Cleansing the data involves automatically identifying exceptions and rectifying them according to rules predefined by Wilco’s client broker-dealer. Data extraction and cleansing tasks can also be scheduled according to the needs of the firm.
West says that the key benefit to this kind of outsourcing is that it allows financial institutions to focus on their core competencies.
“We are already reaping the benefits of our initial investment into Hyderabad,” says Steve Bloomer, Wilco Internatioal’s CEO. “ The calibre of both experienced staff and graduates from India’s world renowned universities and technocal colleges is very high.”
“By continuing to invest in Hyderabad to this extent, by expanding the workforce and offering intensive training and technological excellence, we are confident that we will continue to expand the range of products and services that Wilco offers.”
