Dutch IT innovator Centric expands to Kaunas

Centric, a Dutch IT company, is establishing a division in Kaunas and plans to employ 200 specialists over the next three years. The core activities of the new branch will be technical engineering, managed services, infrastructure and cloud engineering. The Lithuanian team will work closely with international counterparts in the Benelux, Scandinavia and Romania and will also become part of the service desk teams that support our international customers.

Interestingly, the whole process of setting up in the country’s second-largest city started from a simple recommendation coming from one of the company’s Lithuanian employees.

“When we were looking for a new location for our IT operations, a Lithuanian working in our office in Norway heard about this and suggested Vilnius as a potential location,” explains Freddie Veltmaat, Technology Director at Centric. “During the first visit of our senior management to Lithuania, we discovered Kaunas as a very strong city for our activities. We were impressed with the longstanding traditions within the field of technology and the potential talent in the city thanks mainly to Kaunas University of Technology (KTU). The support of the municipality, the universities and Invest Lithuania will allow our company’s culture to be easily transferred to the newly assembled team in Kaunas.”

Centric is a leading provider of software solutions, IT outsourcing, BPO and IT staffing solutions in Europe, supporting both public and private sectors. Centric’s clients operate in the public sector and supply chain areas; the company also supports financial and insurance institutions as well as pension funds. Within the fast-growing fintech market, the Dutch company develops and hosts consumer-driven web applications, which help financial institutions to compete with fintech start-ups in the technological field.

Talent was one of the main reason behind choosing Kaunas, and Centric is ready to hire recent graduates and help them develop the needed skills as they grow together with the team. At the same time, the company is eager to cooperate closely with KTU to ensure that IT professionals-in-the-making get the knowledge they need to keep up with the rapidly changing market needs. Centric is confident it will attract specialists that can bring to the table not only their technical knowledge but also a can-do proactive attitude, which is at the very core of the company’s culture.

Social responsibility

High-value career opportunities aside, Centric also puts a strong emphasis on social responsibility in the communities where it operates. For example, in Romania, Centric was not only awarded the title of Best IT Company of the Year, but also received praise for its Scholarship Fund initiative. Back home in the Netherlands, with its partners, it has initiated a retraining programme that helps specialists with poor employment prospects to develop basic programming skills in just one year. Moreover, the company’s founder Gerard Sanderink has established a special scholarship programme for exceptionally gifted Dutch IT students.

For Saulius Skvernelis, Lithuania’s Prime Minister, this long-term commitment to its employees and the communities within which it operates make Centric a high-value investor in the country.

“Centric’s aspiration to provide its employees not just with the competencies they need to work in the company, but also for their further career development, is an inspiring example,” says the Prime Minister. “It demonstrates that foreign investment is not only about creating workplaces. Partners like Centric can also improve the overall investment climate of the country, which is equally important.”

Centric will be joining other innovative Dutch companies when it establishes operations in Lithuania. As Invest Lithuania earlier announced, Macaw and BrokerTeam are setting up in Vilnius, while GeoPhy and Meridia have opened divisions in Kaunas as well.

“With IT divisions of Nasdaq, Uber and other international companies, Vilnius is already a mature location for IT operations, and it is great to see Kaunas starting to gain traction with IT companies as well,” points out Mantas Katinas, Director General of the foreign investment development agency Invest Lithuania. “Both veterans and newcomers are eager to work with universities and use their own resources to develop local talent. With companies like CallCredit, Devbridge and now Centric, Kaunas is about to become a new hotspot for global services centres.”

Established in 1992, Centric now has divisions in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Romania. It employs around 4,300 staff.