Hapag-Lloyd has been working with Solverminds since 2017 and in June of this year established a joint venture with the group. The opening of this new IT centre in the city of Chennai is the latest development. 

“In the Hapag-Lloyd Technology Centre (HLTC), we will be bundling our strengths and competences,” said Donya-Florence Amer, Chief Information Officer and Chief Human Resources Officer at Hapag-Lloyd. “HLTC will 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.”

She added: “In the medium term, we plan to increase the number of talents in our HLTC to between 300 and 400 specialists – thereby also grow the talent base and attractiveness of the whole company going forward.”

Chennai has been selected for the centre owing to the city’s maritime traditions, large port and more recently reputation in the IT software segment, thus offering Hapag-Lloyd and Solverminds access to a growing pool of talent.

Balamurugan Palanivelu, CEO, of HLTC, explained: “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. 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.”

In addition to Palanivelu, the senior management team at HLTC comprises Venkatesh Balaji Ramamoorthy (CTO), Vaishali Shetty (CHRO) and Sameer Saxena (CFO) from Hapag-Lloyd.

Chennai becomes the third IT centre for Hapag-Lloyd. The other two are located in Gdansk (Poland), and Hamburg (Germany).