Telstra has announced it will create a new Innovation Centre in India’s Silicon Valley to partly address the talent shortage problem.

In an address  to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, Telstra CEO Andy Penn outlined what Australia needs to do to ensure it has the most skilled, best trained and most resilient workforce in a volatile world.

The new centre will bring together talented Telstra and partner employees who will work on key technological challenges in areas like the Internet of Things, Networks, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

“We intend to initially recruit around 300 employees in the ICC, across both network and software engineering, with a view to growing this in coming years,” said Penn. “We will also continue to recruit across all of these capabilities in Australia.”

Penn said Telstra had selected Bangalore, also known as India’s Silicon Valley, with its high concentration of skilled technical talent so the telco can harness the energy generated by working in close proximity to other significant technology companies such as Apple, Google and major IT services players.

“Creating an ICC in India also gives us the opportunity to embrace a start-up mentality. Our ICC will be a centre of excellence, using the latest ways of working like Agile, Lean, DevOps and Human Centred Design,” Penn said. “And we’ll encourage the best of Australian and Indian cultures and working practices – for the benefit of our employees and customers in Australia and internationally.”