Dick's Sporting Goods opens Bengaluru AI hub, plans 400 tech jobs by 2029

Dick's Sporting Goods, the US sporting-goods retailer, is setting up a technology centre in Bengaluru focused on artificial intelligence, according to reports published this week up to Wednesday, 4 November 2026. The centre, reported as DKS Sports ACC (Agentic Capability Center), starts with a team of about 10 people and is planned to grow to roughly 400 employees by 2029. It is led by managing director Kaushik Das and will work for the group's three brands: Dick's Sporting Goods, Foot Locker and GameChanger. The company said it chose Bengaluru for its technology ecosystem and access to engineering talent.

A global capability centre, or GCC, is an office that a foreign company sets up in India to do its own technology, data or business work, instead of hiring an outside IT firm. India already hosts many such centres, and new ones keep opening; one industry report counted 111 new centres between January and August 2026, with Hyderabad leading. They have become one of the most important sources of well-paid technology jobs in the country.

What makes this one stand out is its focus. It is described as an "agentic" capability centre, built around AI agents: software that can carry out a series of tasks on its own, such as checking stock levels, moving inventory between stores or answering a customer's question, rather than just giving one reply. Retailers are among the companies most interested in such tools, because they deal with huge numbers of products, stores and customer orders every day.

For job seekers, the plan points to the kinds of skills in demand: building and testing AI agents, data engineering, analytics, cloud systems and security. A centre that starts with 10 people and plans to reach 400 will hire steadily over the next few years, usually beginning with experienced engineers and leaders and later adding more junior roles. The sports angle also matters: work on sports performance technology is an unusual area for Indian engineers to get into.

The move also shows how the GCC model is spreading beyond banks and software companies to retailers and consumer brands, which now see technology as central to how they sell.

Peepals calculation: growing from about 10 to about 400 people means the centre would become roughly 40 times larger (400 divided by 10). If the growth is spread evenly over the three years to 2029, it works out to about 130 new hires a year (390 divided by 3). Our calculation from the reported figures; the company has not given a yearly hiring plan.

Short-term: The centre will begin hiring senior engineers and AI specialists in Bengaluru to build its first teams.

Long-term: If it reaches its target, it will add about 400 technology jobs in the city and another example of AI-focused work being done in India for global companies.

Who is affected: Software engineers, data scientists and AI specialists in Bengaluru; students planning careers in AI and data; and the Indian GCC sector as a whole.

What to watch next: Hiring announcements and job postings from the Bengaluru centre as it grows towards its 2029 target.

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