UK’s NatWest to invest in indian startups to strengthen talent footprint

The NatWest Group is looking to invest in early-stage Indian startups as it ramps up focus on technology innovation and expands its engineering talent base in India as part of its growth strategy.

The bank plans to invest in startups focused on payment solutions, agentic AI, and control frameworks to build digital capabilities and form tech partnerships. Investment sizes are expected to range from $250,000 to $2 million per deal, said group CIO Scott Marcar.

“Typically, we look at early-stage companies, usually Series A or Series B, sometimes even earlier. We tend to take small stakes and then work closely with those companies to help them scale,” he added.

The group recently opened its expanded Global Capability Centre (GCC) in Bengaluru, moving to a new space to develop customer-facing solutions using digital and AI technologies.

NatWest already has three centres in India—Bengaluru, Gurugram, and Chennai—employing around 17,000 people.

NatWest plans to hire an additional 3,000 people at its GCCs. “India is our largest engineering hub—over 50% of our engineering talent is based here, more than in the UK,” said CIO Scott Marcar.

In India, the bank recruits from banks, GCCs, fintech, product, and tech companies, offering 15–30% pay hikes to attract talent in engineering, AI, and data, said Ruchika Panesar, India country head at NatWest.

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India hosts over 1,700 GCCs generating $60 billion in revenue, according to Nasscom, with banking and financial services centres growing 1.3 times faster than the overall GCC segment

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