Exploring the Hype: GCCs@India- What's Behind the Buzz?

The Rise of Global Capability Centers:

India's journey from being primarily an outsourcing destination to a preferred location for setting up Global Capability Centers has been remarkable. As companies increasingly recognize the need for strategic control over critical functions such as research and development, innovation, analytics, and digital transformation, India's GCCs offer a compelling proposition.

Recently, an observation in seen in GCC India leaders-they tend to move away from being looked at or called as traditional IT or support centers. They are no happier to be looked like extended arm of HQ, rather aspire to be purely looked like the hub of innovation, R & D, technology disruptions, value creators & purposeful delivery centers. These trends have put a different hat to GCC leadership in India-making them a crucial decision maker in core leadership of the conglomerate globally.

Is talent the only reason for GCCs in India to grow?

Maybe be, or maybe not-When we look back at the GE/Mastercard days in 90s, evolving to the like of new age centers like Honeywell, Shell, Sony & of course our fast-paced Banking GCCs early in 2000's, and then today-It's not just about talent. Talent played a major role in getting the attention of the world@India, but multiple factors like-handholding services partners, infrastructure, government policies & Indian leadership/talent in global positions, have played a signification role here. Talent crunch in the last two years was at peak too, when the pandemic happened and suddenly it was all changing era-the talent disrupted the India market significantly. The decision makers were in complete confusion of what's next? This is where, startups played a major role-giving a handholding to GCCs and their services partners too. Not some months back, it was very evident, Indian startup were holding a decent market share in India for GCC market. Indian leadership emerging as thought leaders and frontiers for navigating the GCC sail is one of the significant factors of what we see today. Technology adoption and cultural shift in India have expedited what we were foressing for 2030, this has given a boost to the global conglomerates for investing in India.

GCC consulting organizations have evolved with time

When it comes to GCC centers in India, IT services companies were playing a major role in terms of engagements and driving the organization, and suddenly in last one decade-the chain got extended to consulting and regulatory firms too. Indian IT services companies were eyeing to capture the GCC setup offering, which gave rise to a completely different breed of organizations like Zinnov, ANSR, BCG, ZS consulting and others. They operated in a different zone of bringing new GCCs to India-holding it completely, making easy for global conglomerates to setup their centers in India. They did not limit it to IT, but much beyond-bringing the right ecosystem, infrastructure & people. This gave rise to the count of GCCs, and government corridors welcomed them happily seeing the huge investments lined-up, scaling India's dream of economy power by 2030.

Big4's joined the race

Consulting & audit firms, which did purely engage with global companies for Advisory, Consulting, Audit & taxation, did join the ecosystem expediting the movement. A huge investments and re-structuring went into the consulting firms, and they started connecting the global dots to India more rapidly with existing businesses.

Hiring in these companies scaled to no-where seen in the past ranges, and they happily started engaging for IT services to support the GCCs in India. They did not limit themselves to services but offered a complete ecosystem of managing business (Consulting operations) and IT-operation hand in hand, with clear segregation of Audit businesses bucketed into a separate kitty. Firms like-EY & Pwc are some of the highest contributors to India businesses for GCCs.

GCC forums for bringing people together

It is said-after Igniting a bonfire to bring people together, you will definitely reach somewhere, this exactly what happened with GCC forums. Indian leadership segregated by tags they hold, stand together on a common platform-GCC councils were formed by NASSCOM, Zinnov & others. When people started exchanging thoughts on this forum for technology trends and their vision for GCC centers in India, this gave rise to whole new era-currently. Global leaders were excited to see the ecosystem, IT services partners were happy to find a seat of collaboration and most importantly-India is seen form a very different lens what it was seen a decade back for GCCs setup.

Indian leadership, in these forums started welcoming & announcing more investments on technology & people-boosting confidence of global economic corridors. Global companies are happy to see this boost, and vocal about their support for growth of GCCs.

Stay tuned for GCC-internal side of the story in my next article for GCCs@India....

Thanks,

Utkarsh sinha