Rakuten Group has interests in various areas, including e-commerce, mobile, and telecom. The company’s B2B telecom services arm, called Rakuten Symphony, will also operate from this new office now

Japan’s Rakuten Group aims to hire about 1,000 new employees in India over the next two years.

The company, which already has around 2,000 employees in India, opened a new office in Bengaluru on Thursday, which is its largest office outside its home base in Japan. The office has a capacity for housing more than 3,000 employees and will operate as a product, engineering, and advanced research facility for the Rakuten Group, under its India arm, called Rakuten India.

Rakuten India is our globalization and innovation center for Rakuten Inc globally,” said Sunil Gopinath, chief executive officer of Rakuten India. The company should hit 3,000 employees in the next two years and may even go up to 3,500 by using a hybrid work strategy, he said. A majority of this hiring will be for technology talent. “All of our close to 2,000 employees are working on various product and technology solutions for global businesses,” Gopinath said.

Globally, the Rakuten Group has interests in various areas, including e-commerce, mobile, and telecom. The company’s B2B telecom services arm, called Rakuten Symphony, will also operate from this new office now but should get its own headquarters in India soon.

Rakuten Symphony gained global attention in the last two years, with Rakuten launching the world’s first Open Radio Access Network (ORAN)-based mobile network in Japan. ORAN is a newer way of building mobile networks and allows interoperation with equipment from different telecom vendors. It is expected to be an integral part of India’s 5G rollouts in future.