US telecom giant Verizon is planning to set up a centre of excellence in India by end-2024 to become a leader in the U.S. prepaid market, said a top official.

“India is a big pre-paid market. U.S. is a very big post-paid market. So, for us, one of the areas we are doubling down now is to set up a centre of excellence, called the value segment, which is really the pre-paid segment, out of Verizon India,” Verizon Global Services Executive Vice President and President Shankar Arumugavelu told The Hindu.

Right now, the India Global Capability Centre (GCC) is busy hiring hundreds of people to set up the teams in Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, because a lot of innovation is happening in this part of the world around the pre-paid business, he said.

Asserting that they acquired American wireless service provider TracFone Wireless a few years back, which is a leading pre-paid service provider in the U.S., he said the objective was to continue to be a leading post-paid provider while also becoming a leading pre-paid provider.

Recently, the Value Segment President along with her leadership team visited GCC to understand the existing capabilities, to assess what the other players are doing in this space, and then figure out how Verizon can set up shops to derive more value from India.

According to him, Verizon India was started some 24 years ago with the primary objective of being acost arbitrage centre. Today, it is on a path to be a strategic asset for the entire company, not just in technology.

As of now, the firm has a headcount of about 7,100 people with avast majority of them dealing in technology, digital data, AI, supply chain sourcing, real estate and fleet management and shared services.

Verizon has a GCC in Ireland as well, but that’s primarily a Centre of Excellence for certain functions. Verizon India is the business’ largest GCC outside of the U.S., he said.