Shell to hire 1,000 more in Chennai, Bengaluru

The oil and gas major bets big on new Bengaluru tech unit to drive innovation

European oil and gas major Royal Dutch Shell plans to hire nearly 1,000 people across technology and business operations centres in Bengaluru and Chennai soon.

The company currently has around 6,000 employees at the business operations unit in Chennai and two technology centres in Bengaluru.

"We will add roughly 1000 people in technology and operations centres across India in the near future," said Nitin Prasad, Chairman of Shell Companies in India. Though Shell did not specify on a timeline, a company spokesperson said it was hiring about 100 people a month in one of the two technology centres in Bengaluru.

Even though skills brought in by partners were stronger, there was greater value and synergy when the company's own employees interacting solving a problem using technology, added Prasad. "This is about how we can bring digitisation across all our assets by bringing in more IT people."

Shell said the new technology centre, which was inaugurated on Friday and employs 1000 people, would play a key role in driving innovation in various business assets both in India and globally.

The new technology centre, located near Devanahalli, close to Bengaluru International Airport and spread over 52 acres of land, is positioned along with the company's two global technology facilities in Amsterdam and Houston. This facility in Bengaluru will be home to a wide variety of technical disciplines such as liquefied natural gas, subsurface modelling, data analysis, engineering design, bitumen, distillation, water technology and enhanced computational research.

The company will also work on projects to turn forestry, agricultural and municipal waste into transportation fuels (known as IH2 technology) here. A demonstration plant is also built inside the new facility here.

"India is the perfect place for us to open this technology and innovation centre. Level of innovation we see here and the quality of talent we have are absolutely fantastic. We are trying to find the new solutions for the energy needs of the country and the world by bringing these together," said Harry Brekelmans, Shell's Projects & Technology Director.

The bigger Bengaluru facility will work on three key areas - computational technology, technical services to assets and technology development and deployment. The other technology centre in eastern Bengaluru has about 1500 employees including scientists and engineers.

While Shell is planning to add more than 1,400 service stations across the country over the next 10 years, it is also working on projects to expand its footprint in natural gas business.