Container line Hapag-Lloyd has announced the opening of the Hapag-Lloyd Technology Center (HLTC) in Chennai, a port city in eastern India, with a team of 180 IT professionals tasked with developing maritime software systems.
HLTC will operate as a joint venture under an agreement Hapag-Lloyd established with Indian technology company Solverminds in June this year. Solverminds has been working with Hapag-Lloyd since 2017 in delivering IT operations support and software development.
“In the Hapag-Lloyd Technology Center, we will be bundling our strengths and competences,” said Donya-Florence Amer, CIO/CHRO at Hapag-Lloyd.
“HLTC will thereby make an important contribution to our technological transformation. We are continuing to expand our global IT presence and are able to provide industry-leading software solutions.”
“In the medium term, we plan to increase the number of talents in our HLTC to between 300 and 400 specialists – thereby also growing the talent base and attractiveness of the whole company going forward.”
The Hapag-Lloyd Technology Center will be led by a four-person management team comprising Balamurugan Palanivelu and Venkatesh Balaji Ramamoorthy from Solverminds, alongside Vaishali Shetty and Sameer Saxena from Hapag-Lloyd.
“As a port city, Chennai has always been an important business hub and, in recent years, it has become a major centre for software solutions,” said Mr Palanivelu, who will act as CEO of the Center.
“All these factors – port, business, software – offer us the perfect environment for our technology centre and for developing smart software solutions. We look forward to intensely interacting with Hapag-Lloyd’s global IT teams.”
Chennai becomes the third Hapag-Lloyd Technology Center, alongside facilities in Gdansk in Poland, and in Hamburg, Germany.
