ServiceNow’s decision to anchor over 45% of its global product engineering in India marks a decisive shift in how enterprise software leaders are building for an AI-first, agentic future. With 20% of its global workforce now based in the country and Hyderabad emerging as its largest engineering hub worldwide, India is no longer a support centre it is a core innovation engine.
At a strategic level, this move reflects where the future of enterprise technology is being built. As platforms evolve from workflow automation to AI-driven decision systems and autonomous agents, engineering depth, speed, and cost efficiency become critical. India offers all three along with a rapidly maturing talent pool skilled in AI, cloud architecture, platform engineering, and large-scale systems.
For ServiceNow, consolidating product development in India also enables tighter integration between engineering, AI research, and enterprise use cases. Building closer to execution allows faster iteration, real-world testing at scale, and continuous optimisation of agentic workflows for global customers. This is especially relevant as ServiceNow pushes deeper into AI-powered enterprise orchestration, where reliability and trust are non-negotiable.
From a people strategy lens, the shift signals confidence in India as a long-term leadership and IP creation hub, not just a delivery centre. It creates opportunities for deeper career paths, ownership of core platforms, and global influence for Indian engineering teams helping attract and retain top-tier talent in an increasingly competitive AI market.
More broadly, ServiceNow’s bet reinforces a larger industry trend: global tech firms are rebalancing innovation geography. As AI reshapes software creation, India is emerging as a place where products are conceived, architected, and scaled, not merely executed.
In essence, this move strengthens ServiceNow’s ability to compete in an AI-led enterprise race while firmly positioning India at the heart of the company’s next growth chapter
