Hexaware deepens UK North expansion with Leeds and Manchester deals
Hexaware Technologies has reinforced its commitment to the North of England, hosting a delegation of mayors and civic leaders from West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester at its Mumbai headquarters as part of The Great North's first joint mayoral trade mission to India.
The visit built on Hexaware's June 2026 announcement of a £25 million UK expansion, which the company says will create approximately 1,200 jobs over three to five years across Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham. Of those, 420 posts are earmarked for Manchester and 240 for Leeds, with Newcastle under consideration as a future location given its university talent pool and proximity to Scotland.
The deals
At the centre of the delegation's Mumbai engagements was a discussion between Hexaware and the University of Leeds on strengthening industry-academic collaboration through joint research, knowledge sharing, and structured student placements. Glenn McCauley, Head of Proposition Development at the University of Leeds, described the agreement as "a catalyst to drive economic growth in our region."
Separately, at an earlier leg of the mission in Bengaluru on 14 October, Hexaware met Greater Manchester Mayor Bev Craig alongside representatives of the British Deputy High Commission and the Invest Manchester team. The company confirmed it will invest £9 million in a new Design and Innovation Centre at SISTER, Manchester's innovation district, which it will develop in partnership with the University of Manchester. The SISTER location gives Hexaware proximity to what the company describes as Europe's largest clinical academic campus, on Manchester's Oxford Road Corridor.
Parameshwaran Iyer, Executive Vice President and Head of Europe at Hexaware, said the company sees "considerable potential in the talent and expertise available across these cities," and pointed to graduate recruitment from regional universities as a central pillar of its UK growth model.
Market context
The timing of Hexaware's expanded UK footprint is not coincidental. The India-UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which came into force in July 2026, has lowered barriers for Indian technology companies establishing operations in Britain, and several large Indian IT services groups have signalled renewed interest in UK expansion since the agreement passed.
The North of England's positioning as a destination for digital and technology investment has also gained momentum in recent years, with Manchester's life sciences and AI ecosystem and Leeds' strengths in data engineering and fintech attracting capital from both domestic and international sources. Hexaware's entry into the SISTER innovation district places it alongside other digital-health and medtech-adjacent organisations already embedded in the Oxford Road Corridor cluster.
The broader political backdrop adds context. Both mayors have made inward investment a centrepiece of their combined authority strategies, and the Great North initiative represents an unusually coordinated effort by two metro mayors to attract international capital to a region that has historically competed rather than collaborated for such investment.
Hexaware said it will continue discussions with regional partners on its proposed R&D facilities in Manchester and Leeds, with a final decision on a Newcastle presence still to come. The University of Leeds agreement and the Manchester Design and Innovation Centre are the two concrete deliverables from the India mission, with further milestones expected as the company scales its UK headcount through 2027 and beyond.