Hyderabad: The multinational fast-food chain McDonald’s, operating in hundreds of locations around India after entering the market in 1996, has opened a global office in Hyderabad to become the biggest outside of the US.
“We’re still in the early stages, so it’s hard to pin down the exact investment,” McDonald’s head of global business services operations, Deshant Kaila, said in an event in Hyderabad.
According to Durga Prakash, head of technology (global offices), McDonald’s is utilising AI to validate orders at 400 restaurants to prevent errors before delivering them to customers. The company plans to expand this to 40,000 sites worldwide by 2027.
According to Kaila, the multinational fast-food chain is also developing a customised app that would function internationally and is utilising AI technologies to predict sales, determine pricing, and evaluate product performance.
He stated that the focus of India’s effort will be on developing its AI team, but that investments will be more focused on tools and technology than on hiring additional people.
According to Prakash, the company is in negotiations to open a worldwide office in Poland, similar to those in Mexico and India.
Telangana, a state in southern India, announced earlier this year that McDonald’s would open a global competence centre in Hyderabad, hiring 2000 workers.
India’s global capability centres, once low-cost outsourcing hubs for global corporations, have evolved to support their parent organisations in domains ranging from operations and finance to research and development.
