Watch: Mashreq MD Mahalingam on the importance of retaining intellectual property

Dubai-based Mashreq Bank is looking to increase its India research and development (R&D) headcount by two-thirds by the end of this year to 1,000 employees. Mashreq Global Services' Bengaluru office is the bank's only technology centre outside Dubai.

While Mashreq works with IT services firms Wipro, TCS, IBM, Virtusa and Oracle apart from a few startups for specialised services, it is looking to move more of its cutting-edge work in-house as the company wants to retain the intellectual property developed there, Mashreq Global Services managing director Santhosh Mahalingam told TechCircle in an interview.

Mashreq was earlier executing only application development in-house. The R&D centre will take up work in the areas of operations, information security, analytics, regulatory compliance and underwriting, Mahalingam said.

Like Mashreq, many large companies are increasingly setting up their own innovation and technology centres. Other large global financial services firms like Goldman Sachs, Standard Chartered, Societe Generale among others have launched such centres in India.