Fanatics opened a new technology innovation center in Hyderabad, India.
The company, which partners with some of the largest sporting operations and clubs in the world, including Real Madrid, Manchester United, Big Bash Cricket, NBA, NFL and the Wimbledon Championship, plans to hire around 100 engineers in Hyderabad over the coming years.
Hyderabad has quickly become one of the fastest-growing international tech hubs attracting the world’s biggest companies due to an incredibly rich talent pool. The opening of this innovation center is part of Fanatics’ commitment to growing its technology, data and analytics platform which fuel the company’s innovative vertical manufacturing model.
The model–dubbed vertical-commerce or “v-commerce”–combines Fanatics’ wide-ranging tech capabilities with an agile supply chain and on-demand manufacturing to create the broadest and most responsive assortment of high quality merchandise for fans. In the fast changing and often unpredictable world of sport, it allows organizations the flexibility to align and tailor their retail offering with the action and results on the field.
The India Tech Centre is one of several global offices the company has recently opened as it introduces its vertically-integrated, end-to-end, omni-channel retail capabilities to partners worldwide. In addition to Hyderabad, Fanatics now has operations in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Spain, Japan, Hong Kong and the U.K.
This wide-sweeping expansion is due in large part to a $1 billion investment Fanatics received in 2017 from SoftBank’s Vision Fund, the largest tech fund in history, which identified Fanatics as one of the world’s transformative companies with the ability to shape the future of global commerce.
Chief Technology and Product Officer Matt Madrigal said: “As the global leader in licensed sports merchandise, Fanatics’ growth will be driven by our technology platform and data-driven capabilities. In order to scale our Vertical Commerce model that includes a global e-commerce presence and wholesale capabilities to design and manufacture our own apparel, we need to invest in world-class engineering talent, and we’re thrilled to scale and invest in our India development centre.”
Senior Vice-President of Engineering at Fanatics Ramana Thumu said: “Over the last few years, we have delivered lots of technology driven innovation, and it feels like we are just getting started. The Fanatics business is growing so fast and becoming more complex. To keep pace with this growth and continue to evolve our technology ecosystem, we are aggressively hiring technology talent across our U.S. locations and the new India Tech Centre in Hyderabad.”
Satish Umale, who heads the India operations for Fanatics in Hyderabad, added: “We are very excited about this expansion. The company is looking to fill various technology roles, including full stack software engineers, data and BI engineers, data scientists, UX developers and supply chain specialists. We are off to an excellent start with our initial hires, and we have a very strong pipeline, but we always encourage top quality candidates to apply.”
