Global Trading Giants Step Up India Presence, Fuelling Hiring Spree: Report
India's top engineering schools have become the favoured hunting grounds for talent.
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The NSE is planning to add 2,000 co-location racks within the next two years (File photo)
Mumbai:
Several major global trading firms, including Citadel Securities, IMC Trading, Millennium, and Optiver, are significantly expanding their operations in India's flourishing derivatives markets, driving an aggressive recruitment campaign and prompting exchanges to enhance their technological infrastructure.
These companies' recruitment strategies, disclosed here for the first time, come amid projections that India's substantial domestic consumer and investor populations will help insulate the country from global economic volatility triggered by US President Donald Trump's trade policies.
According to the Futures Industry Association, India accounted for nearly 60% of worldwide equity derivative trading volumes, which reached 7.3 billion in April, while Indian regulators report that the notional turnover of these contracts has expanded 48-fold since March 2018.
For Western trading entities, this financial boom is impossible to overlook, particularly after US trading company Jane Street generated $2.34 billion from its Indian trading operations last year, according to executives from several firms.
"Competition has intensified both in trading activities, with more players pursuing similar opportunities, and in the recruitment market," said Jocelyn Dentand from global high-speed trading firm IMC Trading.
Dentand, who serves as managing director of IMC's India division, added that the company plans to expand its team by over 50% to exceed 150 personnel by the end of 2026.
Foreign investors reversed their stance on Indian equities in April and May, purchasing a net $2.8 billion after consistently selling from October 2024 through March 2025 due to elevated valuations and decelerating earnings growth.
US-based Citadel Securities, a market-making enterprise founded by prominent investor Kenneth Griffin, maintains a compact team of approximately 10 people in India but has substantially increased capital allocation to its operations there, according to a source familiar with the company's strategy.
"We're continuously seeking talent and actively recruiting in India," said the source, who requested anonymity lacking authorization to speak publicly and declined to provide specific details about the expansion plan.
Hedge fund Millennium is growing its India operations through its Dubai and Singapore offices, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter, who also requested anonymity for similar reasons.
Millennium declined to comment on this report. Citadel Securities did not respond to requests for comment.
Netherlands-based Optiver, which launched its India operations in 2024, intends to grow its workforce to 100 by the end of 2025, up from the current 70, a spokesperson confirmed.
"Optiver is investing ambitiously in India, planning to expand to 100 full-time employees by year-end with further scaling anticipated in subsequent years," the spokesperson elaborated.
Amsterdam-based trading firm Da Vinci and London-based Qube Research and Technologies are also recruiting for quantitative trading positions in India, as evidenced by publicly posted job listings.
Rush For Tech, TalentGlobal trading firms are expanding their Indian presence by aggressively recruiting from elite domestic universities and attracting talent from established local competitors.
These companies have hired approximately 300 professionals in India over the past two years across trading, technology, compliance, risk, and legal departments, according to estimates from Hong Kong-based recruitment firm Aquis Search.
"We anticipate continued strong growth over the next few years," said Annpurna Bist, head of quant and tech at Aquis Search.
Intensifying competition has driven salaries upward, with even entry-level traders now earning more than twice what they did three years ago, according to Bhautik Ambani, who leads AlphaGrep Investment Management, one of India's premier quantitative trading firms.
India's top engineering institutions have become preferred recruitment grounds for industry talent.
"We almost exclusively recruit our traders and software engineers from Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)," said IMC's Dentand, referring to the country's network of prestigious engineering schools.
However, recruitment efforts are now expanding beyond IITs to include other universities, Dentand noted.
The influx of global trading organizations has created opportunities for India's two primary exchanges, both of which are upgrading their technological infrastructure.
The National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) plans to add 2,000 co-location racks over the next two years, while the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) aims to increase its capacity to 500 racks by the end of fiscal 2026, up from zero in March 2024.
These racks house servers at exchanges that reduce trade execution times to microseconds.
"As a late entrant, we need to provide additional value to meet the unfulfilled demand from high-frequency trading firms and quantitative firms, among others, for co-location racks," explained BSE Chief Executive Sundararaman Ramamurthy.
He revealed that the exchange has invested between 4.5 billion and 5 billion rupees ($52 million to $58 million) in technology over the past two years.
The NSE and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) did not respond to inquiries related to this report.