REA Cyber City and the India Shift – How realestate.com.au’s Gurugram Hub Reflects a Global Tech Rethink

In October 2024, REA Group, the Australian property tech giant behind realestate.com.au, officially opened its first Global Capability Centre (GCC) in Gurugram. Named “REA Cyber City,” the innovation hub was established with a clear purpose: to harness India’s deep talent in cloud, AI, and product development, not to replicate or compete with Indian real estate platforms, but to build cutting-edge experiences for REA’s users in Australia and New Zealand.

Chief Technology Officer Steve Maidment described the goal succinctly: “Our aim is to unlock the extensive Indian talent in data, cloud, AI and product development to build products for our users in Australia.”

In July 2025, REA Group named Praveen Sharma as CEO of its India operations, a move that underscores how central India has become to REA’s global strategy.

Sharma brings more than 25 years of leadership experience from Paytm, Google, and Airtel, and now joins the executive team of REA Group globally. Based at the Gurugram headquarters, he will oversee both the operational scaling of REA Cyber City and the commercial growth of platforms like Housing.com.

This milestone marks more than just REA’s expansion; it exemplifies a transformative shift in how Australian firms engage with India. For decades, India was treated as the “back office” of the global economy. But that narrative is changing. And fast.

The era of using India solely for call centres and low-cost support services is fading. Today, Australian companies are tapping India to solve core business problems, accelerate digital transformation, and co-create IP.

REA Cyber City, for instance, is designed as a full engineering extension of REA’s Australian teams. Gurugram-based developers and product managers work shoulder-to-shoulder with their Sydney counterparts, contributing to everything from AI-driven personalisation engines to advanced cloud infrastructure.

This isn’t outsourcing. It’s co-ownership.

Australia’s largest telecommunications provider has undergone a similar evolution. Telstra initially used its India centre for IT services and customer support. But over the past five years, Telstra has transformed its Bengaluru operations into a tech powerhouse. Teams there now handle critical functions—cybersecurity, data engineering, and digital product development – that are central to Telstra’s growth.

Telstra’s CTO recently noted that the company’s India teams are now “leading several digital-first product lines,” a shift that reflects growing trust and capability in the region.

Australian software unicorn Atlassian set up its Bengaluru R&D hub in 2018. Within five years, it became the company’s fastest-growing engineering centre globally. Today, Atlassian’s Indian engineers co-develop flagship products like Jira and Trello.

What’s different about Atlassian’s model is that Indian teams are not just implementing decisions; they’re involved in roadmapping, experimentation, and architecture. It’s a testament to the deep collaboration ethos now common among top-tier Australian firms.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has also embraced this new model. With a growing presence in Hyderabad and Bengaluru, CBA’s India centres now help lead on cloud migration, payments innovation, and digital banking platforms. These aren’t auxiliary projects; they’re mission, critical platforms being built with Indian engineers in lockstep with Sydney teams.

According to a recent statement by CBA’s Chief Information Officer, the India team is central to “accelerating the bank’s tech-modernisation agenda.” It’s tempting to see this shift as cost-driven. But the real driver is capability.

Indian talent has matured beyond code delivery into design thinking, product leadership, and AI research. This makes India not just a cheaper alternative but a better alternative in many technical domains. The value equation is no longer about price arbitrage, it’s about access to depth, scale, and innovation.

For Australian companies, this means faster go-to-market cycles, access to world-class engineering, and diversified innovation hubs that reduce geographic risk.

The rise of REA Cyber City, the expansion of Telstra Digital, Atlassian’s R&D velocity in Bengaluru, and CBA’s fintech partnerships in Hyderabad all point to a shared future. One where the Australia–India corridor is not about offshoring but co-creation. Not about cutting costs, but building capacity.

This shift also holds promise for the Indian-Australian diaspora. With increasing cross-border collaboration, professionals in both countries now have opportunities to lead projects, shape platforms, and innovate across borders.

The future of Australian innovation may be written in Python. But increasingly, it’s being co-authored in Gurugram, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad.

As India graduates from a support role to a strategic partner, Australian companies must rethink how they build, scale, and innovate. REA Group’s Cyber City is not an isolated story, it’s a signal. A sign that the age of the back office is over, and the age of global tech partnerships has begun.

And in this new chapter, India is not just along for the ride. It’s in the driver’s seat