🔒Hartford’s newest tech company aims for 200 workers, new downtown office in 2020

There’s a fair amount of optimism coming from Hartford boosters lately, but it quells in comparison to how the city’s newest IT services firm views downtown and the region.

New Jersey’s GalaxE.Solutions Inc. entered downtown Hartford last year, promising to create “several hundred” tech jobs at its newly minted innovation center — dubbed “Outsource to Hartford” — at Upward Hartford’s coworking space in the Stilts Building, at 20 Church St.

The fast-growing global IT services firm has quietly hired some 45 downtown workers since then, and recently told Hartford Business Journal its ambitious plan to employ at least 200 people by summer.

GalaxE, which currently occupies six offices scattered across the third floor of the Stilts Building, is also searching for new downtown office space to meet various hiring goals while existing staff continue to develop and implement technology for the insurance and healthcare payer markets.

CEO Tim Bryan, the company’s founder three decades ago in New York City, in a recent interview said his firm could make Upward Hartford its permanent residence or even purchase a downtown office tower.

“I think the city is one of the best-kept secrets in America,” said Bryan, who is bullish about tapping into Greater Hartford’s talent pool and securing new insurance, healthcare and manufacturing clients in the region. “In my view we will surpass anyone who has come into town recently in terms of hiring.”

GalaxE’s Hartford expansion builds on the city’s recent progression as a landing spot for new tech jobs and others geared toward the next-generation workforce.

Global IT giant Infosys has hired 170 people in downtown’s Goodwin Square office building, and more than 500 statewide since March 2018. The Indian-based company says it’s ahead of schedule in delivering on its promise to hire 1,000 people in Connecticut by 2023.

Idaho insurtech Covr Financial Technologies also launched its new corporate headquarters in downtown’s iconic Boat Building last year, where it now houses about 18 employees, a spokeswoman said recently.

It also complements the innovation efforts of Upward Hartford and three startup accelerators for the insurance, advanced manufacturing and healthcare industries.

GalaxE, a competitor to Infosys more in terms of hiring than clientele, is looking to add at least another 150 or so jobs this year by creating new workforce pipelines with higher-education and nonprofit institutions, in addition to bringing new hires through its extensive job-training program.

It will also rely on Bloomfield health insurer Cigna, which acquired GalaxE’s first-ever client, pharmacy-benefits manager Express Scripts, in late 2018.

GalaxE’s new physical presence near Cigna’s Bloomfield headquarters has made it easier for both companies to interact. Cigna uses GalaxE’s flagship GxFource platform, which has nearly 20 products that help clients with data automation, compliance, infrastructure and security, among other uses.

GalaxE typically serves the healthcare, pharma and life sciences, financial services, and retail and manufacturing industries, among others.

Mark Boxer, Cigna’s global chief information officer, says GalaxE has helped streamline its integration with Express Scripts as the insurer looks to mitigate risk, reduce costs and build a broader health-services business.

“We’re expanding our broader health-services business and driving innovation in the market to meet the ‘whole personal’ health needs of our clients, customers and patients,” said Mark Boxer, Cigna’s global chief information officer. “GalaxE will help us make that vision real.”

Growth blueprint, Cigna’s recruitment

Tripling GalaxE’s Hartford workforce in a matter of months won’t be easy, but an expansion of this magnitude is nothing new for the company.

The Somerset, New Jersey-based firm debuted its second innovation hub — “Outsource to Detroit” — in the Motor City about a decade ago. At the time, it pledged to create hundreds of new jobs and become a piece of the city’s revitalization.

Today, GalaxE has a 150-employee unit in downtown Detroit, where it also established a training program called ExperienceIT with Quicken Loans Inc. and others. It also maintains offices in New York, Toronto, United Kingdom, India, Belgium, Brazil, China, Ireland, Japan and Singapore, and employs about 2,000 people worldwide.

GalaxE’s growth in Detroit caught the eye of President Barack Obama in 2012 as Bryan and his staff were invited to the White House to discuss the competitive advantages of investing and creating high-level IT jobs in the U.S.

Cigna also noticed how quickly GalaxE was growing in Detroit and other markets and envisioned Hartford becoming an ideal landing spot for the company, Boxer said.

When it became apparent last year that GalaxE was looking to add another software-development hub, Cigna’s leadership informed Bryan that Hartford had the business infrastructure, academic partnerships, innovation goals and talent pool to support their next expansion.

Within weeks, Cigna connected Bryan to Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, Gov. Ned Lamont’s office and other business and community leaders to discuss launching downtown.

It was a similar effort that brought Infosys to Hartford.

“Cigna served as the convener,” Boxer said. “Our role is to promote innovation and economic development right here in Connecticut.”

Bryan, whose firm did not receive financial incentives to create Hartford jobs, says he is looking to capitalize and build on recent progress downtown, which includes the addition of more than 1,000 new apartment units.

Hartford, he says, also provides GalaxE employees with a better work-life balance because it’s far cheaper to live here compared to other tech hubs in Silicon Valley, New York City and Austin, Texas.

“I would say Hartford is ahead of Detroit compared to when we started in Detroit,” Bryan said.

2020 goals

Bryan in recent months hired Chandra Dyamangoudar to lead GalaxE’s hiring, business development and civic efforts in Hartford.

Dyamangoudar, a Maryland native, says he moved downtown after spending about 14 years in various mid-level management and senior-leadership roles in the healthcare industry.

Dyamangoudar, who serves as vice president of GalaxE’s Hartford innovation center, says his team is helping healthcare clients modernize their old pharmacy-benefit management systems with new and existing products under the GxFource umbrella.

For example, GxFource tools can scan a clients’ tech infrastructure to determine whether code needs to be tweaked or modernized. Meantime, other tools ensure that insurance claims are being properly processed with the click of a button.

“We need to personalize health care,” he said. “We are moving away from old-school technologies to the newer, much more customer-focused technologies.”

Dyamangoudar said he is recruiting and hiring business and tech analysts, cloud and quality engineers, software testers and Java developers, among other positions, with salaries ranging from $80,000 to $150,000.

Future hires will support new potential clients and major employers in Greater Hartford that GalaxE hopes to sign up in the coming months.

“I think Hartford is not too big of a city, it’s not too small of a city either,” he said. “The talent we have here is untapped. If you take all of that and connect them to local industries, Hartford could be an exciting place for future innovations.”