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1. CASESTUDY CASESTUDY CASESTUDY CASESTUDY SCALING TECH TEAMS CASESTUDY REINVENTED CASESTUDY How The Scalers helped Preqin establish a 450+ person global R&D Centre in India

2. Introduction Thank you for downloading our case study. If you’ve been struggling to expand your tech team without compromising on quality, this is exactly what you need. It’s literally a ready-made recipe showing the steps to set up, manage, and scale a fully integrated, offshore tech team. To make it more tangible and show real results, this study follows the example of Preqin and how The Scalers helped it to scale speedily in Bangalore, India. Presently, Preqin’s offshore team stands at over 450 employees in Bangalore, having grown from an initial scrum team of four back in 2018. If you’re also looking to level up your development operations and wondering how they did it, let’s dive a little deeper... 2/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

3. Introduction 2 4 4. In conversation with Daniel Barnes, EVP, Global Head of Operations, Preqin 29 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Preqin: A leader in investment data 2. The biggest challenge: Scale fast and deliver product 3. How The Scalers built Preqin’s A-team in Bangalore 6 A proven model at any scale 35 The Scalers' model: Nuts and bolts 37 Ready to set up your team in Bangalore? 38 9 The Inception Hiring the first engineers 9 11 From 4 to 70 in 1 year 12 A tried-and-trusted approach... 13 Expanding to more departments Key achievements 15 17 A place of their own Preqin’s office in numbers Establishing Preqin India How The Scalers added value to Preqin’s business 18 21 25 26 3/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

4. Preqin: A leader in investment data Established in 2003, Preqin is one of the world’s most reliable sources of data, insights, and tools for alternative assets professionals across the globe. Taking the financial services industry by storm, today, Preqin has more than 200,000 investors, fund managers, advisors, service providers, and other industry professionals who rely on them to make intelligent decisions in alternative assets. 1. LOCATION: London, UK INDUSTRY: Financial Data Provider FOUNDED: 2003 HEADQUARTERS: London EMPLOYEES GLOBALLY: 2,000 4/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

5. Its products range in assets classes such as private equity, venture capital, private debt, hedge funds, and real estate. Preqin helps its global client base make informed decisions in their financial activities. PR EQ I N AT A G L A N CE 48,000 customers full-time researchers 500 200,000 professionals rely on Preqin 16 global offices As a testament to its success, Preqin has received numerous awards and accolades, including the 2019 European Business Award—‘Ones to Watch’, the 2019 Queen’s Award for International Trade, the Sunday Times International Track 200 in 2019, and Wealth and Finance Best Private Equity Database Firm 2022. PREQIN OFFICES: London, Birmingham, Frankfurt, New York, Singapore, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Chicago, Dallas, Tokyo, Sydney, Dubai, Bangalore, Manila, Guangzhou, and Beijing. 5/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

6. The biggest challenge: Scale fast and deliver product industry’s most comprehensive private capital and hedge fund data tools. An application more powerful than anything it had ever created; its successful completion would help position Preqin as a market leader. However, there was a challenge. 2. At the beginning of 2018, Preqin had plans to build a new flagship product—Preqin Pro. It would be a state-of-the-art web application that provides users with access to the 6/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

7. With an ambitious timeline to launch Preqin Pro, they had to reevaluate their software development capacity. They would need a well-rounded dedicated development team that would build their flagship product. They could take another route and scale their existing local team in London but would it be possible in only a few months? Almost doubling their local team was next to impossible given the significant talent shortage and the high salaries of an average developer in London. The leadership team’s first and obvious choice was to outsource their development processes to an agency that could provide them with the engineers that they needed. At the time, they already had an existing outsourced team in Pune, India. However, they were paying a premium to sustain the team and weren’t entirely happy or convinced by the results. 7/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

8. They were on the lookout for a dedicated development team that would be an extension of their team in London. One that could expand beyond just supporting Preqin Pro and provide additional capacity for an increasing pipeline of work. Enter The Scalers. We had a small engineering team in London and we started working with an MSP based in Pune, India. We loved India, but we wanted to set up our own operation. We did some research and we found The Scalers online. Daniel Barnes, EVP, Global Head of Operations, Preqin 8/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

9. How The Scalers built Preqin’s A-team in Bangalore The Inception When Preqin approached The Scalers, they wanted to build a dedicated development team of experienced engineers with expertise in the latest technologies such as .NET Core, Redux, Elastic Search, MongoDB, and SQL Server. 3. 9/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

10. After a few online meetings, The Scalers’ CEO, Emilien Coquard, met with the COO of Preqin, Darren Thorpe, at Preqin’s headquarters in London. During the meeting, Emilien listened and got to the heart of their issues with their outsourcing agency in India: their employee retention rate was low, the deliverables weren’t on par with their expectations, and they were paying a premium for the service. It’s been fantastic to see our collaboration grow from such humble beginnings to the incredible scale it is now. And the fruits including the market-leading Preqin Pro, DataOps centre, and Preqin’s culture in Bangalore are true testaments to the long-term value The Scalers model brings. Given the situation, Emilien suggested starting small, with just one scrum team. If Preqin were convinced by this team, then they could take things forward. Initially, Preqin weren’t sure how the partnership would develop going forward, however, The Scalers promised a large value-add to their business in a convincing pitch—which they delivered on. Emilien Coquard, CEO, The Scalers 10/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

11. Hiring the first engineers In September 2018, The Scalers officially onboarded Preqin as a partner, with the requirement for four senior back-end and front-end engineers. The recruitment process set off at full throttle, building local employer branding to attract candidates. At the same time, the administration and Chief Happiness Officer (CHO) team were busy setting up operations. They secured a spacious office, furnished it—supplying desks, chairs, laptops, and even ‘swag bags’ for a little personal touch—and handled all the legal paperwork. By the end of January, The Scalers had hired four engineers for Preqin. During those first months, the SVP of Engineering, the project leads, and the CTO of Preqin visited the Bangalore office at least once a month to understand the processes, experience what was going on behind the scenes, and meet their extended development team in person. By the end of January, Preqin’s four-person development team performed beyond its expectations, incrementally adding value to its business. Preqin quickly realised that it was on the cusp of something great. It was at this point that the executives asked The Scalers to build them a second scrum team. Within the next four weeks, the first back-end engineer was brought on board by The Scalers, and the COO and CTO of Preqin visited the office to welcome their first offshore employee. 11/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

12. From 4 to 70 in 1 year Preqin moved fast. By March 2019, The Scalers had onboarded 14 employees including developers, senior back-end and front-end developers, development and release managers, and business analysts who were working dedicatedly on Preqin Pro—its flagship product. The value was clear. The two scrum teams accelerated Preqin Pro to market and Preqin’s executive team had far greater peace of mind with full visibility into development. Preqin decided to stop working with the outsourcing agency and build a fully integrated, dedicated, development hub with The Scalers expanding with 40 engineers—including a scrum master who would work on nine different tech stacks. For me, it didn’t matter if you were based in London, New York, Singapore, or India, we were very much one team and we tried to align our benefits and packages as close to the wider Preqin as possible. And I think that’s been a really important driver in the success of the Preqin India team. Daniel Barnes, EVP, Global Head of Operations, Preqin 12/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

13. A tried-and-trusted approach... The Scalers’ model is based on transparency—that’s why Preqin has unlimited access to its recruitment platform. Preqin can monitor the entire hiring process, the number of candidates in the pipeline, any upcoming interviews, and more. As important as hiring a team is, sustaining it over the long term is just as crucial. Preqin has a dedicated Partner Success Manager in Bangalore that they can reach directly 24/7. Issues with billing, operational questions, and requests for a hardware upgrade are all solved with a single email. 13/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

14. Apart from their Partner Success Manager, the Preqin team was also assigned a CHO who acted as a bridge between the stakeholders in the UK and the team in India. The CHO is also responsible for team-building activities, ensuring that the employees are happy, perks and salaries are provided on time, and the local and offshore teams collaborate effectively. It’s incredible to witness the growth of Preqin in Bangalore. We started out with only four engineers, scaled to over 100 engineers in just two years. More importantly, we’ve built a value-adding, fully integrated extension of their business, here in Bangalore. In my opinion, that’s where the real success lies. Balachander Palanisamy, Partner Success Director, The Scalers 14/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

15. Expanding to more departments The success of Preqin’s engineering team sparked a question in the minds of the executive team: The first 10 data team members joined in November 2020. Within six months they had already onboarded another 60 DataOps members making Bangalore the key location for processing the data, delivering valuable insights to Preqin’s growing customer base sooner. By the end of 2022, it had passed 200 experts, including senior roles and Data Security Experts as well as Analysts. Can we find high-quality employees in Bangalore for other hard-to-fill roles in our company as well? Would The Scalers model work for other departments? To support them, Preqin asked to add a Finance and Sales department and to establish its own People and Culture team. The Finance and Sales department enabled Preqin to expand its client base and aided collaboration with analysts. In October 2020, Preqin approached The Scalers about hiring a test team of Data Analysts to help process the mass amounts of data Preqin and its customers rely on. Again, The Scalers delivered. 15/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

16. including In December 2023, Preqin’s Bangalore operations had passed 450 employees and 300 members of their DataOps team dozens of members of other teams 16/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

17. KEY ACHIEVEMENTS 4-person scrum team starts 25 engineers 70 engineers Over 150 employees Q3 2018 Q4 2018 Q2 2019 Q4 2019 Q2 2020 Q4 2020 Preqin approaches The Scalers with a request for a dedicated dev team. The Scalers’ CEO meets with Preqin’s leadership team in London. The Scalers sets up Preqin’s office space and the dedicated CHO onboards new hires Preqin Pro launches Preqin establishes its R&D team in Bangalore The Scalers sets up a new, larger workspace as Bangalore becomes Preqin’s engineering hub for all its technical projects Preqin sets up its server in its Bangalore office Preqin’s Data Team officially launches to process mass data for clients Project Management & Business Analysts teams start Preqin hires Development Managers for its Bangalore team to support its rapid growth COO of Preqin and SVP of Engineering visit Bangalore to welcome the first employee then first employee visits Preqin’s London office 305 employees 217 employees Over 450 employees Q2 2021 Q4 2021 Q2 2022 Q4 2022 Q2 2023 Q4 2023 Q1 2024 The Scalers helps Preqin start the process of establishing own entity in India Start of construction of Preqin’s office Preqin moves to its dedicated office Finance and Billings team expands to 10 Preqin scales to more than 120 engineers and an over 300-person Data Team Preqin India becomes fully self-sufficient Preqin India legally established Finance and Billings team established Preqin starts building own recruitment and HR teams Preqin hires Head of Research, overseeing Data management teams 17/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

18. A place of their own Although this was beyond the typical scope of The Scalers’ model, The Scalers tailored a custom solution as ensuring their partners’ success has always been their first priority. During the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, the teams kept working uninterrupted from home, but when things came back to normal in 2022, Preqin’s executive committee wanted to set up a dedicated office building in Bangalore. Their current coworking facilities could no longer host everyone, limiting in-person collaboration. Plus, they wanted a specialised site to deliver trainings and workshops for onboarding, upskilling, and compliance. Having successfully grown Preqin’s team from 0 to over 300 employees, they knew The Scalers could be relied on to both deliver on time and oversee everything on the ground. 18/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

19. FIRST FLOOR FOURTH FLOOR W WA AS SH HR RO OO OM MS S W WO OR RK K A AR RE EA A C CO OL LL LA AB B W WO OR RK K A AR RE EA A Full height screen/separation M ME EE ET TI IN NG G S SP PA AC CE ES S M ME EE ET TI IN NG G S SP PA AC CE ES S O OP PE EN N C CO OL LL LA AB B C CO OL LL LA AB B H HO OT T D DE ES SK KI IN NG G W WO OR RK K A AR RE EA A B BO OO OT TH H S ST TO OR RE E R RO OO OM M P PH H With their knowledge of Bangalore, The Scalers soon found a prime, 40,400 sq. ft. location in the heart of the city matching Preqin’s wishlist. With enough space for 275 employees, a canteen for daily meals, isolation booths for private calls, as well as a central location with parking facilities. Although it was an empty shell requiring a lot of work to get in order, that was an opportunity for Preqin to have an office that met its exact requirements. The Scalers’ Workplace Management and Procurement Officer oversaw the whole process starting with provision designs in line with Preqin’s brand and its other offices worldwide so that any Preqin employee would feel at home instantly. Once Preqin agreed, he turned the plans into reality, securing materials and construction crews as well as overseeing the process of bringing the vision to life. 19/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

20. Cafeteria Office floors Lobby Parking Having our own space that’s top-to-floor Preqin has been incredibly powerful. It feels like the office has been here for years. It doesn’t feel like we’ve had it for 11 months. Daniel Barnes, EVP, Global Head of Operations, Preqin 20/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

21. 40,400 sq. ft total floor space 30-person workshop room Preqin’s office in numbers 120 sq. ft. space per person 2 levels of parking 8 phone and focus rooms 1 8 meeting rooms 275 hot desk stations nursing room for mothers 4 chill out zones (one on every floor) 80-seat terrace canteen with free meals possibilities 21/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

22. In December 2022, the office was officially opened with a grand opening ceremony 22/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

23. The day was a combination of Western and Indian traditions, matching the diversity of the local team, executives and team leads who had travelled for the occasion. The day kicked off with a traditional diya lighting ceremony and dancing, before an awards ceremony highlighting the outstanding work from teams in Bangalore. The day ended with an evening drinks social but it wasn’t the end of the celebrations. With team leads and international colleagues present for the opening ceremony, they took the opportunity to engage in team-building events and workations. And, of course, they got to take advantage of the new meeting and training facilities in their new building. 23/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

24. The results from the new office were instant Staff presence in the office shot up with the increased floor space, dedicated areas, and free lunches. The new training facilities boasted a packed schedule of sessions overseen by Preqin’s leadership and The Scalers’ People and Culture team. To help deliver Preqin’s increased training, The Scalers brought in a Head of Training and Development who launched a new series of professional development and work satisfaction programmes. 24/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

25. Establishing Preqin India Preqin’s Bangalore operation had grown from a single scrum team into its second-largest office. With its Bangalore operation a core part of the company in development, DataOps, and other departments too, Preqin started to plan for the long term. We hit a certain number and decided we wanted to have our own Preqin entity and people would be employed directly by Preqin and paid by Preqin. We needed to set up bank accounts. We needed to set up the entity with the Indian government and The Scalers were pivotal in helping us do that. Preqin developed a plan with The Scalers to become a legal entity in India and gradually transition more operations under their control. The Scalers guided Preqin through the whole legal process. Once the entity was in place, Preqin continued to use The Scalers’ HR, admin, and recruitment infrastructure but now with dedicated employees. Over time, Preqin started building its own teams for these departments with some of The Scalers’ employees transitioning across. Daniel Barnes, EVP, Global Head of Operations, Preqin By January 2024, Preqin had established teams for all operations required in Bangalore but continues to use The Scalers’ building management. 25/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

26. How The Scalers added value to Preqin’s business Scaling wasn’t Preqin’s problem; they already had an outsourced team in India with over 100 engineers. Rather, its issues were quality, value, and collaboration. It found The Scalers’ unique approach solved every one of those challenges. It wasn’t just about hiring a couple of engineers to support their main team, or a fix-term project to rebuild Preqin Pro with occasional updates. Instead, it was about adding real value to the business and assisting in a strategic realignment. Working with The Scalers has enabled us to scale a really high-performing team. They took a lot of the load off us to enable us to spend our time building quality software and collecting quality data. We wouldn’t have grown to where we are without The Scalers’ support. Daniel Barnes, EVP, Global Head of Operations, Preqin 26/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

27. Bangalore has allowed Preqin to gain all the benefits of both offshore talent pools and build- ing a local team. With its development team all in one place and part of Preqin’s company, it gave management full visibility and complete control over the entire process. Something not possible with traditional offshoring and at a scale not possible for a local team. The value of building a team of its own employees, integrated with Preqin’s culture, has also shone through. Employees are committed to the company’s mission, identifying and delivering additional value to customers. Examples include the interactions Analysts have with customers as well as a host of additional features that started as Proof of Concepts engineers build in their spare time. The ultimate proof is that although Preqin’s ambitions were for a small development team focused on one product, Bangalore is now the heart of all its R&D and houses multiple other departments. 27/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

28. POSITIONS HIRED: TECHNOLOGIES HIRED: ● Sales Admins ● Finance Managers ● Marketing Automations Specialists ● Security Engineers ● Data Operations Specialists ● Research Associates ● People Operations Specialist ● Training and Development Manager ● Head of Billing ● Order Management ● Back-end Engineers ● Front-end Engineers ● Data Analysts ● QA Automation ● Business Analysts ● Release Managers ● Development Managers ● Scrum Masters ● Desktop Support Architects ● Mobile Developers 28/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

29. In conversation with Daniel Barnes EVP, Global Head of Operations, Preqin 4. How did you start working with The Scalers? DB: We were already outsourcing our development processes to a company based in India, but they weren’t particularly good at project management or delivery. We really wanted to build our own team in Bangalorebecause we loved the place—it’s basically Silicon Valley number two—and the people, but we didn’t know how to do that. 29/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

30. We found The Scalers online, and after meeting with Emilien, I realised that our businesses just fit together really well. A couple of weeks later we were interviewing candidates in Bangalore. We started with four developers and now five years later we’ve got over 450 employees, a dedicated office building, and our own entity. How does collaboration with your Bangalore team work? DB: Incredibly well. I want to emphasise the fact that we don’t treat the team as an ‘offshore team’. For me, it didn’t matter if they were based in London, New York, Singapore, or India, they’re all part of the Preqin engineering team, irrespective of their location—they’re completely integrated. And I think that’s been a really important driver in the success of the Preqin India team. 30/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

31. Why did you decide to build a dedicated Preqin office in Bangalore? DB: Obviously, at the back end of COVID, everyone was working remotely. We decided that it was important to bring everyone together as we had in all our locations and we knew a dedicated office building would be key. We were using co-working spaces until this point and now we’ve got our own space that we’ve got from top to floor Preqin and I think that’s been incredibly powerful. It feels like the office has been here for years. It doesn’t feel like we’ve had it for 11 months. 31/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

32. Why did you establish your own entity in India? DB: When we passed 100 engineers we knew this was going to be a long-term project, and decided as a business that we needed to start going on our own. The first phase of that would be to have our own Preqin entity and people would be employed directly by Preqin and paid by Preqin. And The Scalers have really helped us on that journey. 32/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

33. How have you benefited from partnering with The Scalers? DB: There have been so many positives! We’ve managed to grow at scale, we’re at 450 plus people and growing. We’ve been involved in many important projects for Preqin on the engineering level, from the data collection, we now have a people team here, a finance team, we’ve got a sales team now in Bangalore. So it’s really hard to say one particular thing, but we wouldn’t have grown as Preqin without having the team in India. 33/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

34. Beyond recruitment and HR, how have The Scalers added value to Preqin? Lastly, how has it been, working with The Scalers? DB: It’s been a success, and I don’t say that lightly! As soon as we met them, we felt that it was a good connection. We felt that our values were aligned and what we’ve built over the last five years is just phenomenal and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without The Scalers’ support. DB: They’ve been a huge help in terms of localisation, helping us manage the Bangalore team on a local level operationally. The local knowledge is invaluable when navigating India’s unique rules and regulations, building our benefits packages, and of course, building the team culture with the ‘Preqin DNA’. Trust is really important in this regard, and we really trust The Scalers. 34/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

35. A proven model at any scale Preqin didn’t set out to establish a new global hub for its company. Like many companies, it struggled with local talent shortages and wanted to extend its development teams. Preqin discovered that The Scalers model provided far higher value than alternatives and could also scale in size and breadth. The benefits were profound. The quality of work far outpaced the traditional outsourcing providers it had been using to deliver its products, resulting in the outstanding Preqin Pro. But the real impact has been the long-term value Preqin has received and delivered to its customers. 35/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

36. Long-term wins: Accelerated and centralised development Reduced staff turnover and faster hiring Developing employees and raising future leaders Scaled data processing to support more customers This was only achievable with a dedicated team built for Preqin Streamlined data processing to deliver invaluable insights faster 36/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

37. The Scalers’ model: Nuts and bolts Setting up your offshore workspace Instilling your company culture Hiring top 1% talent Handling operations Modern office space Scalable model Access to a hiring platform to monitor the process live Dedicated Partner Success Manager Dedicated Chief Happiness Officer Ensuring IT security and compliance 37/38 The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED

38. Ready to set up your team in Bangalore? If you would like to get a dedicated team that adds long-term value to your organisation, get in touch today. One of our experts will gather your requirements so they can craft a tailored solution exclusively for you. +31 20 323 3271 thescalers.com partnerships@thescalers.com The Scalers CASE STUDY | SCALING TECH TEAMS REINVENTED