Synopsis
Candescent, a US-based fintech, is doubling down on the India market and expanding to three cities: Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. The company’s India headcount stands at 1,000, which is half its overall workforce. Two-thirds of its engineering resources and 80% of its designers are also in India.Listen to this article in summarized format
Speaking with ET, Candescent global chief operating officer John Garvey said the company has scaled its headcount in India to 1,000 from around 600 a year back. Overall, the firm has around 2,000 employees. Besides India, most are in the US, and some in Europe and Canada.
“We have two-third of our engineering resources in India and 80% of our designers are here as well. We are investing heavily in talent acquisition,” Garvey said.
Candescent was spun out of US-based retail software company NCR Voyix in 2024. The company counts private equity major Veritas Capital as one of its major investors. Its last known valuation was $2.4 billion, in 2024.
The company builds digital banking systems, which are deployed at around 1,300 financial institutions, mostly in the US. It powers digital banking platforms, account opening services, and teller systems at branches as well.
The firm works with credit unions, community banks, and also powers certain services offered by US-based high-street lenders.
While Garvey said the company is profitable, he did not disclose the numbers.
“We serve 30 million users in the US, and around 15% of the active accounts are served by our platforms,” he added.
Commenting on the role of AI in financial services, Garvey said the company uses AI tools like Cursor to write around 80% of the code, but at the same time it is hiring at scale to grow the business.
“Our head of AI engineering sits in India, our head of products and AI sit in Silicon Valley,” he added.
Garvey did not give projections on growing its headcount and client base, but mentioned that given that the company is expanding its business, even a 20% headcount increase over the next one year will not be surprising.
