An International Brand Plants Its Flag in India

When a company like International Flavors & Fragrances chooses to establish a Global Business Services hub in India, it is making a statement that goes well beyond real estate. IFF is a Fortune 500 leader whose work sits at a remarkable intersection — science and creativity, nature and technology, taste and human emotion. Across 110+ countries, they craft the flavors, fragrances, and wellness solutions that shape how people experience food, beauty, and everyday life.

India, today, is where the world's most ambitious multinationals are choosing to deepen their capabilities. The country's GCC ecosystem has matured dramatically, from a cost-arbitrage destination into a genuine innovation geography. For a brand like IFF, establishing in India is a strategic commitment: to build a center that does real, valuable work at a global scale, staffed by world-class talent, and operating as a true extension of the parent organization’s culture and ambition. That commitment demands a workplace worthy of it.

A Brief Beyond the Blueprint

IFF's Hyderabad GBS hub was conceived as a 75,000 sq ft space, designed to house around 600 employees spanning finance, IT, business development, and shared services. The scale was significant. But more important than the scale was the intent: this would not be a back-office. It would be an innovation anchor for the region, a space where IFF's global standards, culture, and creative energy would be physically present on Indian soil.

They brought in Zyeta on a full Design & Build mandate. The brief that emerged was built around four outcomes that no square-footage calculation could resolve alone.

The space needed to attract and hold top-tier talent — in a market where the best engineering, data, and business professionals have genuine choice, and where the workplace itself has become a decisive factor in where people choose to work. It needed to make IFF's brand tangible — because a company whose entire identity is built on sensory experience cannot afford to place its people in a generic corporate environment.

It needed to function as a platform for global collaboration — hosting international leadership, connecting with HQ across time zones, and showcasing IFF's innovation portfolio to the world. Moreover, it needed to deliver on a genuine sustainability and well-being mandate, aligned to LEED and WELL standards and to IFF's own ESG commitments.

The Design Response: The Sensescape

At IFF, flavor creation has never been purely about taste. It has always been about layered sensory perception, the way a single experience can carry emotion, memory, and meaning simultaneously. This philosophy became the starting point for the entire workplace concept.

Zyeta's response was built on a single, powerful insight: IFF doesn't just craft flavors, it creates full sensory experiences that resonate with emotions, memories, and connections. The workplace should do exactly the same.

Rather than designing an office, Zyeta designed an experience, a spatial narrative called the Sensescape, conceived as a journey beyond flavors. Moving away from the conventional office layout, the workplace unfolds as a sequence of landscapes that shape how people move, interact, and experience space. As one travels through the building, the Sensescape reveals itself gradually, evoking distinct moods, supporting different modes of work, and anchoring every person in IFF's world at every step.

The journey was structured around seven landscape typologies, each with its own spatial character, materiality, and purpose. Ocean anchors the arrival reception and café as vibrant, energizing social spaces that set the tone for everything beyond. Islands offer collaborative zones for spontaneous exchange and teamwork. Oasis zones provide agile, informal settings for quick discussions and stand-up meetings. Forests house the enclosed meeting rooms, quieter environments for deeper dialogue. Caverns are the acoustically treated focus retreats designed for concentrated, uninterrupted work. Plains extend across the open workstation landscape where the daily rhythm of team productivity unfolds. And at the summit, Peaks, the boardroom and executive zone, the culmination of the journey, represents leadership, perspective, and decision-making.

These were not aesthetic labels applied after the fact. They were the organizing logic for every spatial, material, and sensory decision across both floors. Transitions between zones are choreographed through shifts in light quality, ceiling height, material warmth, and the integration of natural elements. Scent, tactile comfort, and environmental graphics layer additional sensory cues across the floorplate — creating a workplace that feels intuitive and immersive without ever feeling theatrical.

Key Design Solutions

A dramatic central core anchors the workplace across both floors — a sculptural internal staircase serving simultaneously as circulation infrastructure, social meeting point, and visual centerpiece, framed by a commanding green wall that introduces a strong biophilic presence at the heart of the building.

An Experience Centre directly off the arrival sequence gives IFF a dedicated showcase space — AV-equipped and flexible, where the company's global product portfolio can be demonstrated and experienced in person. This has transformed how IFF engages visiting leadership, prospective clients, and new recruits on Indian soil, moving product innovation from presentation to lived experience.

Across two floors, 1,400 workstations are organized into self-sufficient neighborhood zones, each with focus desks, collaborative nodes, enclosed meeting rooms, and quiet retreats within immediate reach. A café for 150, multi-functional boardrooms with advanced AV, and executive lounges positioned along key circulation routes complete an ecosystem designed for every mode of work.

Sustainability and Well-Being Performance

The Hyderabad hub was delivered to LEED and WELL certification standards, and the outcomes reflect genuine, measurable performance.

On water efficiency, the project achieved approximately a 50% reduction in indoor water use through the careful selection of low-flow plumbing fixtures — chosen to significantly lower operational demand while fully maintaining user comfort. Critically, 81.9% of the building's total water demand is now met through an alternate water source: treated water from the STP is reused for flushing, HVAC, and landscape purposes, making the hub close to operationally water-independent.

On energy, the project achieved 33.3% energy savings against the ASHRAE 90.1-2010 baseline , a result of both building systems design and a comprehensive LED-based lighting strategy that delivers superior efficiency over conventional fluorescent and halogen alternatives. The LED approach does more than reduce consumption: interior lighting was designed to achieve precise glare control, accurate color rendering, and balanced surface reflectivity through thoughtful fixture selection and placement, ensuring that visual comfort and energy performance work in tandem rather than in tension. The combined effect: a 30.6% reduction in GHG emissions and a 25.5% reduction in energy operating costs, delivering ongoing financial benefit to IFF's India operations alongside its environmental credentials.

On well-being, every workstation is positioned to maximize natural daylight and quality views. Dedicated recreation, medical, mothers', and quiet focus rooms address the full spectrum of human needs within the workplace. The biophilic design language — running from the central green wall outward through material choices and zone characters across both floors — creates a constant sensory connection to nature that reinforces both employee well-being and IFF's own identity as a company rooted in the natural world.

The Outcome

The IFF Hyderabad GBS hub with LEED Gold rating is now one of the most purposeful GCC workplaces in South India. It has given IFF a workspace that competes for talent, communicates brand depth to every person who enters, enables genuine global collaboration, and delivers verified sustainability performance across energy, water, and human well-being.

More fundamentally, it has answered the question every international brand establishing a GCC in India must eventually face: how do you make your India center feel like you? How do you ensure that the values, the culture, and the creative ambition that define the organization globally are present and alive in a building in Hyderabad?

At IFF, the answer is the Sensescape. A journey beyond flavors, and a workplace that proves that when design begins with identity and ends with performance, the two are never in conflict.