Blackstone has launched its first global capability centre (GCC) outside the US in Bengaluru, as the investment firm plans to double its India investments to $100 billion by 2030 from about $51 billion invested so far.
The Bengaluru centre will support Blackstone’s global operations across finance, technology, human resources, legal and compliance. Vice-chairman and chief financial officer Michael Chae said the team would be integrated with the firm’s operations worldwide rather than function as a standalone unit.
Blackstone currently has about 170 employees in India, including around 90 in Mumbai, its India headquarters, and approximately 80 in Bengaluru. Chae said the Bengaluru team is expected to grow to 100 or more employees by the end of the year, while the Mumbai team will also expand.
The centre is led by Susan Yung, senior managing director in credit and insurance investment operations. Yung previously worked in India and was a managing director at Goldman Sachs’ captive centre in Bengaluru. Blackstone has also appointed senior leaders across functions including engineering, whose team will work with the firm’s global chief technology officer.
The expansion adds another major global financial institution to Bengaluru’s GCC ecosystem, which has become an important base for technology, finance, operations and specialist corporate functions. For the city’s office market, the announcement also links business-services employment with investment activity in commercial property and technology infrastructure.
Blackstone’s assets under management have increased nearly fourfold over the past decade to almost $1.4 trillion, according to the report. In India, its major investments include Mphasis, Federal Bank and commercial property. The firm is described as the country’s largest institutional commercial real estate owner, with $22 billion in assets and control over more than 150 million square feet of office and retail space.
Those properties serve technology companies, including other GCCs, giving Blackstone exposure to both the occupiers of India’s office markets and the assets in which they operate. Blackstone-backed companies have also been involved in five of India’s six real estate investment trusts, including Embassy REIT.
Chae said the company had not concluded that artificial intelligence would lead to widespread job losses or a broad collapse in office demand. He said Blackstone did not view AI as an existential negative for IT services companies and pointed to the opportunity for businesses to develop their own tools and services.
He cited Mphasis as an example of a company using AI to strengthen its business. Blackstone, he said, continues to assess service providers based on the capabilities they can bring to portfolio companies. Many businesses are likely to continue relying on IT services partners rather than build all AI capabilities internally because of the time and investment required.
Blackstone’s other India investment themes include travel and leisure, luxury hotels, technology and AI infrastructure, manufacturing and e-commerce. Its logistics platform, Horizon Industrial Parks, has also expanded to become India’s largest logistics park platform, according to the report.
