Japanese marketplace Mercari to double India workforce, add specialised tech teams

Japanese C2C marketplace Mercari has planned to double its workforce strength in India global centre of excellence (GCoE) by 2024. The company which opened its CoE in June 2022 in Bengaluru has also moved to a new office in the same city. The GCoE comprises 40 employees currently who support the company’s operations in Japan. They are working with the Japanese development team which includes members from over 50 countries. 

"Our objective is to establish Mercari as a global tech powerhouse by leveraging the potential that India's diverse talent pool offers,” said  Vish Magapu, senior director and site lead, Mercari India.

The GCoE will have specialised teams focusing on the backend, mobile development, and infrastructure, among others, bridging the gap between India and Japan.

“The inauguration of our new Centre of Excellence underscores Mercari's commitment to nurturing innovation and technical expertise on a global scale. With our growing team of talented professionals in India, we are ideally positioned to drive technological breakthroughs and deliver exceptional experiences to our customers worldwide,” said Ken Wakasa, vice president and group chief technology officer, Mercari.

Mercari is Japan’s largest community-powered marketplace with a gross merchandise value (GMV) of about 1 trillion Japanese Yen. It has over 22 million active users in Japan and aims to develop financial and crypto services based on an e-commerce-type platform.

In April, Mercari introduced a ChatGPT-based shopping assistant to its marketplace place platform for secondhand items. Called Merchat AI, it enables real-time conversations and provides product recommendation based on chat prompts. The new shopping assistant.