How a Global Water Technology Provider scaled from one leader in India to a 100-member engineering team
Peepal Consulting partnered with Xylem for 5 years to help them establish and scale their India operations.
What we achieved
The Challenge
One global leader, limited brand presence, a large-scale hiring mandate
When Xylem set out to establish its technology capability in Bangalore, there was just one GCC leader who flew from the US to lead this.
Major challenges:
No Internal TA Function: With no existing TA function in place, the first priority was building the hiring team required to support future hiring needs.
End-to-End Hiring Infrastructure Built From Scratch: The hiring infrastructure needed to be built from scratch, including workforce planning, talent mapping, market intelligence, JD creation, interview design, and full-cycle hiring execution.
Limited Employer Brand Presence in India: Limited awareness of Xylem as a technology employer in India’s talent ecosystem
Compensation mismatch: Initial compensation assumptions were based on Vadodara benchmarks, which were significantly misaligned with Bangalore’s market realities.
Candidate attrition: As the GCC continued to scale, limited employer brand recognition, evolving market realities, and compensation expectations that were misaligned with Bangalore benchmarks contributed to ~70% offer drop-offs
Our Approach — the Peepal Way
Rather than operating as a recruitment vendor, we became their end-to-end talent partner
Predictability in Hiring
We conducted workforce planning and talent mapping specifically for the Bangalore market to understand talent availability, compensation benchmarks, and realistic hiring timelines before initiating hiring.
Market-Led Intelligence
We provided them with market insights to understand the talent landscape better. A key highlight was a nearly 50% variance between existing compensation assumptions and Bangalore market expectations for niche engineering talent.
Strategic Alignment
With limited employer brand visibility in Bangalore, we developed targeted positioning and messaging strategies to build awareness, credibility, and interest among engineering talent pools.
Expert-Led Execution
Leveraging our experience in engineering hiring, we managed candidate engagement throughout the hiring lifecycle, building stronger candidate relationships and significantly reducing drop-offs from 70% → 30%
Building for Scalability
Beyond hiring, we helped establish their internal Talent Acquisition function, enabling a structured handover once the GCC reached scale.