BENGALURU: Nasdaq-listed travel technology company Booking Holdings is investing $250 million through 2026 into its centre of excellence (CoE) in Bengaluru that would employ 1,000 people during the same period. It currently employs 320 people.
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Booking Holdings setting up a centre in Bengaluru underscores the city’s tech prowess in playing a significant part in reimagining the future of travel. The Bengaluru tech centre is the second CoE after it launched the first one in Bucharest in Romania last year to support the company’s growth roadmap.
The India centre is headed by Randhir Bindra, who joined last year as the centre of excellence lead and general manager for India. Prior to joining Booking Holdings India, Bindra was senior director – professional services, at Dell EMC. “Bengaluru is a centre of great technology. No one’s going to complain that the location may be less expensive than certain other expensive places in the world like the Silicon Valley in the US. But you don’t go into Bengaluru because you’re going to save money on engineers,” Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel told TOI.
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Booking Holdings, which has a network of brands including Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Rentalcars.com, Kayak and OpenTable, clocked $17 billion in revenue in 2022, a 56% increase over the corresponding period last year. The resurgence in travel demands last year saw nearly 900 million room nights booked through its platform.
Fogel said they’re ramping up skills in key digital transformation imperatives including fintech, data analytics, genAI, software development skills for mobile and in areas of trust and safety. “Cybersecurity is a very big interest of ours. So are end-user support and global business services. But the idea is instead of developing individually for each of our different brands, for instance booking.com is well-known in India, we have companies that aren’t that well-known to travellers here like Kayak, OpenTable and Priceline. Priceline, which has had a back-office development in the UK for some time, is now going to also be able to do more technology solutioning at its Bengaluru centre of excellence,” he added.
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Fogel said one of the areas of focus is generative AI where Booking Holdings will work with large language model players to explore ways to incorporate these technologies to make travel seamless for its customers. Two years back, researchers from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) collaborated with Booking.com on improved recommendation systems.
