India is emerging as the epicenter of SAP’s plans to build the Autonomous Enterprise. Few could have imagined this in 1998, when SAP opened its first office in Bengaluru and the location was little more than a back-office supporting the company’s headquarters in Walldorf, Germany.
Those days have long since been lost to history.
From a single building in Bengaluru, SAP’s presence in India has expanded across the country, transforming a small operation into one of SAP’s most important global innovation hubs. Today, more than 18,000 employees are on the payroll, making it SAP’s second largest location.
SAP’s presence in the country has two closely connected dimensions: SAP India, led by Manish Prasad, and SAP Labs India, led by Sindhu Gangadharan.
At SAP Labs India, innovation meets impact and ideas turn into intelligent enterprise solutions for the world
SAP India is a regional business organization serving India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. With locations in Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Gurugram, Mumbai, and Pune, SAP Labs India drives product development and innovation for SAP solutions used worldwide.
SAP’s commitment and trust in SAP Labs India to deliver innovation is evident with the opening of SAP Labs India Innovation Park, located in Bengaluru, India’s top startup hub. Inaugurated in August 2025, this €194 million investment is SAP’s largest research and development hub outside of Germany and can accommodate an additional 15,000 employees.
From local solutions to global impact
Solving local challenges and then scaling the solutions globally has become a hallmark of SAP Labs India. Teams working to help customers navigate India’s complex tax reporting requirements laid the foundation of SAP Document and Reporting Compliance. Today, this solution serves customers in more than 50 countries.
That pattern of turning local expertise into global product innovation is now visible in SAP’s AI strategy.
With Sudhakar Singh, who leads the AI Security office, and the global head of engineering for Joule and head of SAP Business AI, Rahul Lodhe, both based at SAP Labs India, the location plays a visible role in shaping the agenda for the Autonomous Enterprise.
Teams in India engineered Joule, an AI solution grounded in SAP’s business data and context and integrated across SAP and non-SAP systems. Accessed via a conversational interface, Joule has evolved from a copilot and now orchestrates background AI capabilities and Joule Agents.
One example is the Data Product Creation Agent, designed to help SAP Business Data Cloud users overcome the lack of quality data products—one of the hidden bottlenecks in AI.
In a matter of months, with help from domain experts beyond SAP Labs India, the proof-of-concept (PoC) became the Data Product Creation Agent.
The speed of development was astonishing, says Leena Kharti, development manager for the team. Kharti, who has worked in development for 16 years, attributes this to the mindset shift in her team. “We got into the habit of thinking differently: today there’s a blocker, so let’s work on something else that moves us forward. In AI, speed is a feature, and that mindset made all the difference,” she says.
The same spirit of innovation extends beyond SAP Labs India’s own teams to the wider network of founders, engineers, and emerging technology firms around them—and the ideas it generates.
India’s startup ecosystem—the third largest in the world—has become a powerful source of innovation, complementing the country’s deep engineering talent and entrepreneurial culture. This offers SAP Labs India a valuable pipeline of new ideas, technologies, and partnerships that can help shape the next generation of enterprise software.
To tap into that energy, SAP Labs India launched the SAP Startup Studio program in Bengaluru in June 2026. The six-month accelerator program offers selected startups the opportunity to co-create enterprise-ready solutions with SAP teams and scale through SAP’s global ecosystem.
This year’s cohort included ANSCER Robotics, Pulse Energy, and QNu Labs, whose work spans enterprise AI, robotics, industrial intelligence, and quantum-safe technologies.
While the focus areas of this year’s cohort differ, the program’s goal is the same: to turn emerging technologies into practical business solutions. This provides SAP an early window into innovations that could help define the future of the Autonomous Enterprise.
“India has all the ingredients to win in AI”
India has an outstanding talent pipeline with more than 2.5 million STEM graduates in 2026 and one of the world’s most dynamic startup ecosystems. Combined with SAP Labs India’s growing role in innovations such as Joule and agentic AI, these strengths are shaping the solutions SAP delivers to customers worldwide.
As SAP advances its vision of the Autonomous Enterprise, the importance of SAP Labs India lies not simply in its size but in its influence on what SAP ships to its global customer base.
“India has all the ingredients required to win in AI,” says CEO of SAP SE Christian Klein. “First, the quality of technical talent and universities is extremely strong. Second, India is investing heavily in building the infrastructure that AI ecosystems need. And third, it’s a country that is pro-business with a strong focus on becoming an even better place to invest.”
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