Watch: Bengaluru now a global R&D hub for products, services: Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian

Sydney-headquartered enterprise software firm Atlassian set up operations in India last year and has been rapidly growing its presence in Bengaluru. 

The firm recently leased a new office space in the city that will accommodate up to 700 people, as it ramps up its research and development (R&D) capabilities here. It already runs its application marketplace from Bengaluru, which is one of 5-6 R&D hubs that the company runs globally. 

The 17-year old Australian firm pushed through a successful initial public offering three years ago and has since seen its valuation grow more than 10 times to around $50 billion. Founded by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, it is known for products such as project tracker Jira and team collaboration software Confluence. Revenues for the financial year ended December 2019 stood at $1.2 billion.

In an interview with TechCircle, Cannon-Brookes, who was in Bengaluru recently to formally launch the India development centre, spoke about why mergers and acquisitions form an integral part of Atlassian’s growth strategy, its approach to R&D and embracing the cloud. 

Excerpts from the conversation:

“We’ve got large parts of Jira now being built here (Bengaluru) as well as our commerce team driving our global commerce service…”

“About 90% of our new customers now would start with our cloud offerings… obviously we have a 17-year history of on-premise offerings as well.”

“We have not historically looked at any Indian companies for acquisitions. But never say never!”