GalaxE Solutions Expanding Downtown into 1001 Woodward

[BrushStart]

According to Crain's, GalaxE is growing faster than expected in its Downtown location. The firm will add more employees and expand into the 1001 Woodward Building. This clearly highlights the importance of Detroit's central business district.

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...troit-presence

[esp1986]

According to Crain's, GalaxE is growing faster than expected in its Downtown location. The firm will add more employees and expand into the 1001 Woodward Building. This clearly highlights the importance of Detroit's central business district.

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...troit-presence

They had already leased 28,000 sq. ft. of space at 1001 Woodward when they got the state tax credits. They are growing faster than expected and just needed more space. So they are not expanding into 1001 Woodward, but merely expanding within the building. They are at 38 right now, and are looking to be at 120 people at that location within a year and 500 within five. Hopefully they can put a good dent in the occupancy of that building by the time it's all said and done. Good news though.

[BrushStart]

They had already leased 28,000 sq. ft. of space at 1001 Woodward when they got the state tax credits. They are growing faster than expected and just needed more space. So they are not expanding into 1001 Woodward, but merely expanding within the building. They are at 38 right now, and are looking to be at 120 people at that location within a year and 500 within five. Hopefully they can put a good dent in the occupancy of that building by the time it's all said and done. Good news though.

Woops, my mistake. Isn't the IRS also moving into 1001 Woodward?

[spiritofdetroit]

Nope - IRS is going to be moving into 4 floors at 'Comerica Tower'

[Jimaz]

More from today's Detroit News: IT firm GalaxE.Solutions expands new Detroit branch

GalaxE.Solutions has more than doubled the number of employees it intends to hire this year to 160 from 70. Business has grown faster than expected because of changes adopted this year in federal health care policy, said Tim Bryan, chief executive of GalaxE.Solutions.

"We're seeing a lot of work that's coming as our clients prepare for health care reform," Bryan said.

... It received a $4.6 million state tax break over five years. Because of the recent growth in clients, the firm says it might surpass its goal of hiring 500 workers in five years in Detroit, Bryan said.

The pickup in business also prompted the company to add a third floor to its Campus Martius office.

"We believe that being here in Detroit and capitalizing on the opportunity will lead to exponential growth," Bryan said. "There's a major opportunity here to expand the IT industry in Detroit and make this an IT hub like Silicon Valley or parts of New York."

GalaxE.Solutions located in Detroit in part because people here will work for lower pay than in other parts of the country, he said.

... [GalaxE] expects its work force to double in the next two years.

About half of its worldwide staff is in India, but the company would like to focus on hiring in the United States, Bryan said. It would allow the company to put Americans back to work, while solving language, time zone and international political issues, Bryan said.

"Our customers want us to do work inside the U.S. and in Detroit, as opposed to having that work go outside of the country."

Jobs are posted under "Careers" at galaxesolutions.com

[fryar]

"We believe that being here in Detroit and capitalizing on the opportunity will lead to exponential growth," Bryan said. "There's a major opportunity here to expand the IT industry in Detroit and make this an IT hub like Silicon Valley or parts of New York."

Unguarded optimism aside, he's right. Costs are low, after all, and you don't have to work anywhere in particular over the internet. Silicon Valley is probably a bit much, but an also-ran, like in NY, it can be.

[Jimaz]

I doubt he meant Detroit would become another Silicon Valley. I think he just meant that it might be possible for Detroit to become a regional IT hub.

The India backlash is interesting. I've read the same about other companies but didn't fully believe it. I think this is the first I've seen it requested by a company's customers. That makes it more believable.

[Hypestyles]

hopefully a trend that can continue.. but how to get India-based companies to relocate to urban Detroit?

[Mind field]

Great news! Too often these job creation projections companies give when they get tax breaks are too optimistic. Hopefully more companies will continue to invest in Detroit!

[Rocko]

Who else is in the 1001 Woodward Building now?

[Lowell]

I believe that is now Webward Anenue.

Great news.

[Mackinaw]

Lovely news. Props to them. I hope more will imitate their example of considering how the greater good might be advanced considerably more by one viable business decision [[leasing office space downtown) than another equally viable one [[leasing office space in an office park).

[DetroitDad]

Webward, Wooodward has always been The Avenue of Michigan. It describes where investment needs to go. It used to be towards the lumber mills and industrial plants.... now it's webward, going towards the "web". Excellent developments abound.

[FredGarvin]

Maybe we can have the best of both worlds for these companies whose customers demand that their IT support re-relocate back to the U.S. There's definitely an Indian population here that they can recruit from thereby allowing Indians to staff the facilities yet have them domiciled in the U.S. Thoughts?

[[btw- before anyone calls me out, this post was made in jest)

[Lowell]

There is a very prominent Indian / South Asian-Americans IT-related community in Detroit. Most prominently there is Syntel, Inc. in Troy which is doing very well.

Key Executives
Mr. Bharat Desai , 57
Co-Founder and Exec. Chairman
Mr. Prashant Ranade , 57
Chief Exec. Officer, Pres
Ms. Neerja Sethi , 55
Co-Founder, VP
Mr. Arvind S. Godbole , 53
Chief Financial Officer, Principal Accounting Officer and Chief Information Security Officer
Mr. Raghunath S. Ramdas , 55
Sr. VP of Procurement and Global Taxation

Details
Sector: Technology
Industry:Information Technology Services
Full Time Employees:12,567

Yes they have a lot of operations in Bangalore and India, but they employ a lot here in Michigan.

Webward Ave. was dubbed that in good-humor when Quicken announced its move to Compuware. Much credit of this IT emergence has to go to Pete Karmanos and his decision to move and build downtown. Compuware has has become the chrysalis of a very positive transformation of downtown.

[Jimaz]

About half of its worldwide staff is in India, but the company would like to focus on hiring in the United States, Bryan said. It would allow the company to put Americans back to work, while solving language, time zone and international political issues, Bryan said.

"Our customers want us to do work inside the U.S. and in Detroit, as opposed to having that work go outside of the country."

I've been pondering this customer-driven pressure to hire locally.

Has anyone witnessed that phenomenon elsewhere? Why would GalaxE's customers in particular want them to do work inside the U.S. instead of overseas [[other than the minor reasons mentioned)?

[Jimaz]

Consider that GalaxE's customers are likely to be in the medical services sector. [[I guess that's a given.)

Consider that GalaxE's customers' customers are likely to be local patients [[local medical services are less vulnerable to being offshored because they are inherently limited to serving local patients personally).

GalaxE's customers have an interest in ensuring their own local patients can afford their services and so want their supplier [[GalaxE) to hire their local patients?

Complicated but plausible? I'm just trying to understand why GalaxE's customers would want them to hire locally.

Could this be a model for pulling the rest of Detroit up?

[fryar]

I think it's more that people across the country are really annoyed when they call their credit card company, and "Sue-Beth" is clearly not native to the US and doesn't even understand common references. I realize that nothing on GalaxE's website tells me that that is the type of outsourcing they do, jargon-filled as it is, but I thought that was the basic idea. Not off-shoring everything, since some things are better off not being off-shored.

[Malcove Magnesia]

I never applaud Indian companies coming to Detroit and setting up shop.

In my real life job, I'm straddling the line somewhere between being a "senior engineer" and being a manager [[mostly the former, since I like keeping my hands in the code). I've been approached by a number of headhunters over the years looking to hire an American face for an offshore team. The fact that GalaxE wants to hire here "because people will work for lower pay than in other parts of the country" attests to the kind of bottom feeders these kinds of companies are. They want to hire desperate Metro Detroiters for super cheap and ship as much of the work as they can to their offshore [[even cheaper) teams.

What Detroit really needs are competitive companies, entirely located in the area or at least the U.S., that pay industry standard wages [[the kind of solidly middle class wages that would help to drive the revitalization of the entire region, not just the big D). There is hope though: I read about startup-type companies like this [[the ones I'm wishing out loud for, not the offshore-ers) in my weekly Metromode spam messages. Detroit just needs lots more of the local entrepreneurs and less of the people that only want to take advantage of the [[hopefully temporarily) bad economic situation.