More than 67% of the Fortune Global 30 and 174 of the Fortune 500 have GCCs in India – a critical shift from traditional outsourcing to integrated strategic ownership, according to a recent ANSR report. India’s GCC now resides at the head of functional leaders with global P&L responsibility. In many cases, they serve as global centers of excellence for AI, GenAI, cybersecurity and product engineering.
But as the global business landscape shifts towards innovation, digital transformation and rapid decision-making, India’s GCCs are undergoing an identity reboot. Major changes are underway in global talent policies, regulations and trade realignment.
To understand the evolution of GCCs in India and their future trajectory, Mint in collaboration with Oliver Wyman recently organized a roundtable discussion on “Architecting the GCCs of the Future”.
Leaders seemed unfazed by the proposed US tax on overseas operations, even though such a policy change could potentially shake up an industry that employs over 2 million people and contributes nearly $46 billion to India’s exports.
“Policy may change, but innovation endures,” said Kavita Mehra, principal consultant at Dell Technologies. “You can regulate costs, but you can’t limit innovation. GCCs are now an integral part of global operations – there’s no turning back.”
There was a consensus across the room that the India GCC story is not just intact – it is accelerating into its next phase.
“It’s a net positive opportunity. Ours is a huge company based in a small town. So there’s always going to be an opportunity for the kind of skills and scale that we need,” agreed John Dawber, vice president and managing director of global business services at Novo Nordisk.
Many agreed that the long-term financial impact of new US policies would be negligible. “The shifting ecosystem is a big reason why it’s an opportunity for both India and the US. As most large corporates are now setting up GCCs in India, they don’t necessarily need to be present in the US to serve clients. It’s a good way for the US to filter the talent they really want there in terms of value addition and skill set,” said Kishore Seshagiri, Chief India Digital Officer.
What’s next?
The panel then shifted gears to the bigger question: What next for GCC?
In the new paradigm, the GCC will no longer be insular entities; they will become nodes in a global innovation network. “Integrated operations, powered by artificial intelligence and automation, will deliver a 60% increase in productivity. But scalability will come from partners, not ownership,” said Krishnan Iyer, chief growth officer at LTIMindtree.
This ecosystem model will mark a turning point. Rather than competing with service providers, GCCs will collaborate with them – and with startups, academia and specialist AI firms – to accelerate innovation.
In fact, the line between what is outsourced to third-party GSI and what is part of GCC is blurring. “We will see hybrid or extended global business units where internal teams and service partners work together seamlessly. Perhaps we should start referring to the GCC as Global Value Ecosystems (GVes) or Global Impact Ecosystems – because value and impact define their identity in today’s reality, not cost,” said Sumit Sarawgi, head of India at Oliver Wyman.
Several GCCs, such as Bosch Global Software Technologies (BGSW), now operate engineering, product customization and even market-oriented functions designed for local needs but scaled globally. “We actually fall into the ‘multi-format’ GCC category,” said Dattatri Salagame, executive director, CEO and president of Bosch Global Software Technologies. “Our organization manages $200 million in independent business – about 15% of our total turnover.”
This shift – from dependency to autonomy – signals a new era for the GCC.
The GCC journey has gone through clear stages: from cost to skills to value creation to value realization. But what lies ahead is not about scale or headcount; it is about value arbitrage – leveraging India’s talent, technological sophistication and innovation ecosystem to outperform global peers.
Kaustubh Deshpande, Managing Director, India Center at SAP Fioneer, noted that the US may no longer be an automatic career destination for young professionals. “We are the largest digitally native, English-speaking workforce in the world – and historically we have always adapted seamlessly to changing global contexts,” he said.
In short, India is no longer just the back office of the world. It is quickly becoming a brain.
Leadership deficit
The panel agreed on one thing: the transition from execution to strategy cannot happen without a leadership rethink. For many GCC countries, the challenge is not technical capability but cultural readiness.
“It’s not about having a seat at the table. It’s about having impactful conversations to influence decisions,” said Vivek Veeraraghavan, senior vice president of digital transformation for APAC at Northern Trust.
This sentiment has captured a sea change affecting the entire Indian GCC ecosystem. Once designed primarily to reduce costs and execute defined mandates, these centers are now viewed as incubators of innovation and talent. But to truly make the transition from GCC to GVC, it won’t be about staff growth, but about impressive leadership, the panelists said.
There has been much debate over whether this leadership will be brought in-house or brought in from overseas. Some argued for the slow burn of emerging leaders internally, while others believed that an external infusion was necessary to challenge entrenched thinking.
“It depends on where you are in your journey,” said Arvind Vaishnav, Head of Philips Innovation Campus. “If your organization is accelerating, internal growth makes sense. But if you’re at a reset point, you need outside perspectives to redefine what success looks like.”
Real leadership, experts agreed, is contextual. It depends on whether the organization is in a phase of growth, transformation or reinvention.
Sanjay Menon, managing director of Publicis Sapient India, made a key point: “We are culturally the best in the world at helping someone else succeed,” he said. “If we don’t tell our own stories with pride and faith, we will always be seen as a support act.”
Others agreed that GCC needs to invest more in creating narratives—creating videos, visual stories, and thought leadership content that demonstrate not just capability, but impact.
“Different leaders will have different strong skills and you can’t expect to handle them all. Some don’t have as much knowledge but are great storytellers, so it’s important to take risk and responsibility,” said Tarun R. Kodnani, co-founder of Flowace, while pointing out the risks involved in choosing the right leader.
Culture, courage and change
Several leaders agreed that culture remains the invisible hand shaping leadership outcomes. Indian organizations, while efficient and compliant, often depend on formal verification to assume authority. This hesitation can cost Indian professionals opportunities for global roles.
Flexibility and adaptability emerged as other critical characteristics. Brathaban Karuppaiah, CEO of SBM Offshore India, pointed out that while many aspire to global roles, few are willing to relocate or take on cross-cultural assignments. “You can’t say you want to be a global leader but also insist on staying in one place. Mobility and thinking go hand in hand,” he said.
A new challenge on the horizon is the changing aspirations of younger professionals. The impatience of Gen Z employees—who are looking for impact and recognition now, not years from now—is forcing organizations to rethink leadership development.
Several panelists noted that managing hybrid and remote teams during the pandemic exposed leadership gaps that still need to be addressed.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the discussion was the shift from cost optimization to value engineering. Murali Krishna K., Providence’s global chief executive and country leader, summed it up: “The competencies required for value creation are fundamentally different from cost optimization. We need to nurture leaders to be value-driven innovators, and that requires intent and investment.”
This requires GCCs to stop seeing themselves as back-office functions and start behaving like businesses in their own right – accountable for results, revenue and transformation.
All agreed that this readiness depends on building an entrepreneurial culture that celebrates innovation, risk-taking and cross-functional collaboration.
The discussion ended with a frank reminder that not all challenges are external. “Some of the problems we face are of our own making,” said Lalji Goswami, head of DDAP GCC – R&D PPM at GSK. “We talk like these problems just happened, but they developed organically because we let them.
His solution: deliberate self-disruption.
