Compass has tapped the brakes on new brokerage offices in the U.S. But it’s doubling down on tech talent in India.
The SoftBank-backed brokerage announced plans Tuesday to launch a tech campus in Hyderabad focused on developing mobile apps. In a statement, CTO Joseph Sirosh cited the city’s “deep pool” of software development talent.
Over the past year, New York-based Compass said it has more than tripled its tech team nationwide to a total of 400. “This injection of talent is enabling us to launch new features, including AI-powered recommendations,” Sirosh said.
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To run the new office, which will be in Hyderabad’s HITEC City, Compass said it hired Jaideep Ganguly, who spent nine years as Amazon’s director of software development.
Previously, Ganguly was director of engineering at Microsoft. At Compass, he will be vice president of engineering under Sirosh.
Compass said the Hyderabad tech hub will be the company’s fourth. One opened in Seattle last year and Compass also has tech hubs in New York and Washington, D.C., the company said.)
Although Compass has touted its technology since its launch in 2012, it has been forced to defend its offerings in recent months. After launching a proprietary consumer relationship manager, or CRM, last year, Compass bought Contactually, a CRM popular among competing firms. Several former Compass executives told The Real Deal last month that the firm faces a challenging road.
In April, Zillow filed two lawsuits accusing Compass of poaching three tech executives and trying to get proprietary information to accelerate its own tech development. The suits were settled in July.
In the wake of WeWork’s failed IPO and huge valuation drop, Compass has tried to distance itself from the co-working company — another SoftBank-backed firm claiming to be changing the real estate industry with tech and culture. “There’s nothing about what’s happening at WeWork that changes what’s happening at Compass,” CEO Robert Reffkin told TRD in October. Defending Compass’ valuation, he said it was set by multiple investors, not just SoftBank.
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