When identity security provider Saviynt inaugurated its GCC in Bengaluru, it wasn’t merely opening another offshore office, it was reinforcing a strategic pivot.
“The vision has always been to make India the heart of Saviynt’s global strategy,” says Nitin Varma, Managing Director, Saviynt India. “This centre is a statement of intent. It reaffirms our deep commitment to India as a hub for innovation, talent, and what we call enabling digital trust.”
Saviynt’s expansion comes at a time when enterprises worldwide are grappling with the dual challenge of securing digital identities and managing the rapid infusion of AI into enterprise systems. For the company, India is emerging as both a growth engine and a global innovation lab.
A hub for innovation, co-creation, and talent development
Varma outlines three clear objectives behind the Bengaluru centre. “First, continuous innovation, to help our customers innovate fearlessly. Second, co-creation with partners and customers, to ensure they can earn and sustain digital trust, which is the new business currency in the AI era. And third, bridging the skill gap through structured talent programs.”
To address the third objective, Saviynt has launched the Saviynt University initiative, which partners with colleges and universities across India. “We are enabling and certifying young graduates on identity and access management,” says Varma. “The goal is to make them impactful from day one.”
Why Bengaluru?
While several global technology companies have been diversifying to Hyderabad, Pune, and other cities, Saviynt has chosen to deepen its roots in Bengaluru.
“Bengaluru was a natural choice, it already had a thriving Saviynt presence that has grown exponentially in recent months,” points out Akshay Sivananda, Global CISO, Saviynt. “The innovation culture, availability of high-quality talent, and the supportive local ecosystem make it the right place for our next phase of growth.”
Varma adds that the city’s start-up ecosystem and the government’s proactive engagement were strong enablers. “Bengaluru is now the sixth-largest tech hub in the world. The government is actively helping GCCs connect with startups and enabling ease of doing business. This ecosystem energy made it a clear choice.”
Engineering with a global mandate
Saviynt’s Bengaluru GCC isn’t limited to local or support functions, it carries a global engineering charter. “We are not building features for one market,” Varma explains. “We are developing complete products and platform capabilities that will serve customers worldwide.”
Saviynt operates on a platform approach, helping enterprises consolidate multiple identity layers under a unified framework. “Our teams in India have developed products from scratch,” says Varma. “We work in seamless collaboration with our U.S. and global teams. The focus is on making the platform more effective and resilient for customers.”
The centre houses a wide range of functions, product engineering, DevOps, InfoSec, SOC, customer success, and HR, operating in an integrated global model. “It’s a truly end-to-end setup,” adds Sivananda. “Not just R&D, but full lifecycle operations are managed here.”
Security by design: The foundation of trust
With SaaS security increasingly under scrutiny, Saviynt has institutionalised a “secure by design” framework across its development lifecycle.
“At the end of the day, what we protect for our customers is of very high consequence, their identities,” says Sivananda. “When I joined Saviynt, I made it a point that our internal security requirements should be a superset of our customers’ requirements.”
This philosophy is embedded in every stage of development. “Security begins with architecture reviews and threat modelling,” he explains. “We embed static and dynamic security testing into our DevOps pipelines, so controls are automated, scalable, and sustainable.”
Saviynt’s approach extends from build to deployment. “We have standardised, audited mechanisms for securely deploying customer environments in adherence with global and local compliance frameworks,” affirms Sivananda. “Every customer interaction is fully traceable, who accessed what, when, and why. That’s what creates trust.”
Tackling the new frontier: AI and non-human identities
As enterprises embrace AI, the definition of “identity” itself is changing. Machine agents, microservices, and AI models now outnumber human identities in enterprise environments.
“Recent research suggests non-human identities outnumber human ones by over 80:1,” says Sivananda. “Managing their lifecycle, knowing what they are, what they can access, and for how long, is the new frontier.”
He also mentioned that Saviynt’s Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Just-in-Time (JIT) access capabilities are central to addressing this challenge. “Traditional service accounts have standing privileges that are never changed because teams fear disruption,” he explains. “Our platform automates this. Users check out credentials only when required, and access expires automatically after use.”
Varma adds, “We apply the same lifecycle management principles to human and non-human identities alike. JIT access reduces the attack surface significantly by ensuring that sensitive access is temporary and fully auditable.”
Bridging the awareness and adoption gap
Despite India’s digital acceleration, enterprise adoption of identity and access management (IAM) has historically lagged. Varma attributes this to legacy mindsets rather than technology barriers.
“Identity used to be an afterthought,” he says. “But with 650 million smartphone users and 20 billion UPI transactions a month, every app, every tap, and every API has become a digital entry point, and therefore, an identity.”
According to Varma, 92% of Indian organisations have faced at least one identity-related breach. “The mindset is changing fast,” he says. “Earlier, compliance was treated as a tick-box exercise. Now, enterprises are realising that identity is the foundation of business resilience and digital trust.”
Sivananda adds that deployment speed is also a key differentiator. “Lightweight, cloud-native IAM solutions that deliver rapid time-to-value are what enterprises want,” he says. “That’s what Saviynt enables.”
From compliance to competitive advantage
In a complex regulatory environment, spanning GDPR, India’s DPDP Act, CCPA, NIS2, and DORA, identity becomes a unifying layer of compliance.
“Identity acts as the anchor,” says Varma. “It helps enterprises seamlessly innovate while staying compliant. Our SaaS-based Identity Cloud allows organisations to reduce implementation time and accelerate time-to-value.”
For traditional or legacy companies, integration anxiety remains a challenge. “They worry something will break,” Varma acknowledges. “That’s why our professional services team in Bengaluru plays a critical role in helping them onboard securely and smoothly.”
Identity, AI, and the future of digital governance
Varma believes that in the AI era, the scope of risk has expanded beyond security to include ethics, transparency, and accountability, and identity governance lies at the core of managing this new paradigm.
“Earlier, digital transformation was about uptime and compliance,” he says. “Now it’s about explainability, bias, and governance. Identity governance brings in transparency and accountability, it creates an audit trail that lets enterprises prove what happened and who was responsible.”
He sums it up precisely as, “Without identity, you cannot prove. Without proof, there is no trust. And without trust, there can be no digital transformation.”
Saviynt, from its Bengaluru centre, aims to combine innovation, compliance, and security into a unified vision for the next generation of enterprise identity.