Davos 2025: India is a super strategic market, says SAP’s Saueressig

Thomas Saueressig, member- Executive Board, SAP

India is a “super-strategic market” and is home to European software multinational company SAP’s largest research and development (R&D) centre outside its headquarters in Germany’s Walldorf.

“For SAP, India is a super strategic market. I'm the proud board sponsor of India itself. We have a lab in India with more than 15,000 amazing talented developers,” Thomas Saueressig, member- executive board, SAP, told Moneycontrol at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on January 23.

Around 3,000 leaders from more than 130 countries gathered at the 55th annual WEF meeting, which ends January 24.

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This year, Saueressig added, the company doubled its footprint by opening a second campus in India, which can accommodate another 15,000 professionals.

“Half of the unicorns in India are SAP customers,” Saueressig said, adding the company is helping these startups scale globally.

The executive board member said it's “fascinating” that SAP benefits from the growth of India in itself.

The business software maker recently said it will hire "over proportionally" in India, which will soon house its biggest workforce, overtaking the headcount in its German headquarters.

Saueressig said the company’s digital co-pilot has been developed entirely in India. “And India has one of the huge advantages which no other R&D lab at SAP has, that every single product line is represented in India. So everything what we do across the products will, by definition, be in India,” he said.