DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, has shaken up the tech world and has proved that building a high-quality AI model doesn’t have to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. 

While companies like OpenAI invest over $100 million in developing AI models, DeepSeek has reportedly built a GPT-4-like model for just $5.6 million. This remarkable achievement is attributed to its efficient design, innovative training methods, and strategic resource management.

So far, most Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India have relied on OpenAI for AI-driven innovation. For instance, Lowe’s partnered with OpenAI on its AI initiatives even before the launch of ChatGPT. However, DeepSeek’s cost-efficient approach raises an important question: how will it impact GCCs in India?

As hubs of cost arbitrage, GCCs may find DeepSeek an attractive alternative for AI innovation, offering potential savings and greater flexibility. Yet, despite the promising opportunities, many GCCs are adopting a cautious approach, preferring to observe how DeepSeek evolves before making significant commitments.

What GCCs Think about DeepSeek

In a conversation with AIM, Ryan Cox, Synechron’s global head of artificial intelligence, said that he sees DeepSeek’s feat as a major shift in how AI is developed and deployed. 

“DeepSeek has disrupted our understanding of AI economics by achieving what seemed impossible: creating a high-performing AI model for $5.6 million, compared to the $100 million plus budgets required by industry leaders like OpenAI.”

For Cox, this achievement partly reflects a geopolitical response to US export restrictions, raising questions about its long-term AI leadership versus strategic positioning.

He explained that as AI continues to grow, the demand for powerful computing resources will continue to increase. Although DeepSeek’s model is cost-effective, it still runs on GPUs from big suppliers like NVIDIA and AMD. 

According to Cox, efficiency makes DeepSeek’s approach special. It shows that businesses of all sizes can now access advanced AI without spending a fortune.

“Beyond cost savings, this democratisation of AI introduces new competition, spurring better results and innovation for end users worldwide. It also underscores the importance of leveraging global AI talent,” Cox added.

At Synechron, their testing of DeepSeek’s 32-billion-parameter model showed promising results but also highlighted the need for careful bias detection and compliance measures before widespread use.

Looking ahead, Cox believes that successful AI adoption in 2025 will require balancing innovation and responsible management. He advises companies to focus on three key areas: clear validation processes, strong compliance systems, and flexible technology that can keep up with rapid changes.

Meanwhile, Raghavendra Vaidya, managing director and CEO of Daimler Truck Innovation Center India (DTICI), takes a more cautious stance. “I think it’s too early to comment on DeepSeek. I think it has created havoc in the capital markets,” he said.

Vaidya pointed out that while AI models are incredibly complex and expensive to build, the core algorithms have been publicly known for years, owing to companies like Google. 

However, creating an AI model is just one part of the equation; it doesn’t automatically bring business value. “I don’t think everybody should start building their LLMs. It doesn’t make any sense. There will be a few big tech players who will build those LLMs.”

“Building an LLM is like building a capability, and a capability doesn’t deliver business value. You must actualise that capability,” Vaidya further said.

Why is Governance Required?

DeepSeek’s breakthrough may change the AI landscape, but its real impact will depend on how businesses use and govern these models in the coming years.

However, there are challenges beyond cost. Open-weight AI models like DeepSeek’s allow for customisation but also require strong governance. “The real challenge for enterprises isn’t just cost optimisation, it’s governance,” Cox warned.

Since some AI models are developed with certain restrictions, especially in domains like politics and culture, businesses using them must carefully validate their accuracy, fairness, and security. 

“CIOs and technology leaders must establish rigorous governance and validation frameworks to qualitatively ensure their GenAI solutions meet performance, security, and ethical benchmarks,” he added.

As per Salman Waris, managing partner at TechLegis Advocates and Solicitors, the Indian government should launch a high-level investigation into the extent of data mining and web scraping carried out by DeepSeek AI. He stressed that its model raises serious security concerns, particularly since India recorded the highest number of app downloads in the first 24 hours of its launch. 

Moreover, from a regulatory standpoint, the government should consider adding specific provisions in the proposed Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules to safeguard data privacy and security, especially concerning the use of AI bots like DeepSeek.

Waris also pointed out the relevance of these concerns for Global Capability Centres (GCCs). GCCs handle sensitive data, making them potentially vulnerable to major data breaches if they implement DeepSeek AI. He stressed the importance of investing in stronger data protection, IT security, and regulatory compliance to prevent such risks.

“It might only be a matter of time before GCCs using DeepSeek AI face serious data breach incidents. They need to prioritise data security and compliance to safeguard sensitive information,” Waris concluded.

The post What DeepSeek Means for GCCs appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Verint, a global leader in customer experience (CX) automation, has announced the establishment of its new Global Innovation Centre (GIC) in Bengaluru. The firm plans to expand the GIC to approximately 1,000 employees by the end of 2026 and continue the expansion of its workforce by 15-20% every year.

The firm is looking to hire engineers specialising in AI, cloud, data design, and data science. 

In a conversation with AIM, Rob Scudiere, CTO of Verint, and Ajayy M Dawar, vice president of the GIC, elaborated on the rationale behind the establishment and how the innovation hub will contribute to the global R&D of the company.

Verint has been present in Bengaluru for over 20 years, making it a natural choice for the company’s first GIC. Scudiere, who has over 25 years of experience in the SaaS industry, emphasised Bengaluru’s role in driving Verint’s vision of being a pioneer in CX automation.

“Our technology solutions are designed to help organisations achieve AI-driven business outcomes, reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and enhancing customer experience. The incredible talent in Bengaluru is a key enabler of this vision,” Scudiere said.

Reinforcing this perspective, Dawar pointed out that Verint’s office in Bengaluru has seen significant year-over-year growth. “We have been investing in this facility, expanding by 40-50% annually. Beyond R&D, we also have customer care and other key functions based here, which gives us the leverage to focus on innovation,” he said.

AI Agents, Automation, and Bengaluru

With AI automation playing an increasing role in GCC operations, Verint aims to prioritise employee upskilling and reskilling at the GIC. 

“We have a great talent pool, and we continue to bring in experienced hires and fresh graduates from top IT universities,” Scudiere noted. Notably, the company has been actively hiring experienced AI and cloud professionals while collaborating with top universities to bring in fresh talent.

“We have a structured program for career development and training, covering areas like cloud computing, AI, and data science. Additionally, we partner with hyperscalers to leverage their training programs at reasonable costs. Our hackathons further foster an environment of continuous innovation,” Scudiere explained.

The executives revealed that while the firm is hiring from external avenues, it has internal plans to retain existing talent and continue developing them.

“This is a talent hub for us, and we’ve been investing in this facility year over year. It made sense to continue expanding in one location where we have established capabilities rather than branching out elsewhere,” Dawar added.

With the GIC’s focus shifting toward R&D and innovation, Scudiere highlighted some of the major contributions coming from its GICs globally. He believes Bengaluru will contribute in the same way. Rather than working on isolated projects, the centre will be fully integrated into Verint’s global strategy. 

One such innovation is the Data Insights Bot, an AI-powered solution that helps customers gain actionable insights and automate processes.

Moreover, Verint’s GIC will play a crucial role in developing TimeFlex, a tool that democratises how agents manage their schedules without supervisor intervention. “We are seeing significant business outcomes from TimeFlex, including increased employee satisfaction and reduced agent attrition,” Scudiere said.

The AI Agent Strategy for Verint

As part of Verint’s AI-driven CX strategy, the company has introduced a suite of AI agents under its Copilot brand. These AI-powered bots are designed to optimise customer interactions and streamline workflows.

Scudiere outlined the five core AI agents currently in deployment:

• Smart Transfer Bot – Ensures seamless transitions between self-service and assisted channels.
• Coaching Bot – Provides real-time guidance to agents during customer interactions.
• Knowledge Bot – Conducts behind-the-scenes research to deliver relevant information to agents.
• Call Summary Bot – Automatically summarises customer conversations for improved efficiency.
• CX/EX Scoring Bot – Monitors real-time sentiment between agents and customers, offering supervisors valuable insights.

These AI-driven solutions have delivered significant cost savings for clients, enabling them to reinvest in customer experience initiatives while improving operational efficiency. However, Dawar clearly stated that AI agents are not intended to replace human employees. 

“We see AI as an opportunity to enhance innovation, not as a replacement for people. This is just the beginning, and we are excited about the doors it will open for us and our customers,” he said.

The post How Verint’s GIC in Bengaluru Will Contribute to its Global R&D appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

India’s global capability centre (GCC) ecosystem is expanding rapidly, set to grow from 1,700 centres in 2024 to 2,100 by 2030. While US-based GCCs continue to dominate, non-US GCCs are growing at a CAGR of 6.8%, nearly twice the growth rate of US firms.

Karnataka: The Hub of US-Based GCCs

Karnataka remains the leading destination for US-headquartered GCCs in India, hosting over 50% of them. According to a Zinnov-AmCham GCC report, two-thirds of the world’s most admired US companies present in India have set up centres in Karnataka. 

The key industries among them are BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance) and software & internet.

Some of the prominent US-based GCCs in Bengaluru are Lowe’s, Kimberly-Clark, and Wells Fargo, to name a few.

Rise of Non-US GCCs in India

A growing number of non-US companies are also setting up GCCs in India. “The anticipated 15-20% surge in non-American GCCs in India over the next two years highlights the country’s escalating strategic importance in the global business landscape,” said Alouk Kumar, founder and CEO at Inductus Limited.

Notably, GCCs from the Asia-Pacific region have experienced a growth exceeding 65% in the past five years, with those from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa growing by around 35-40%. 

This trend is driven by enterprises from Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East diversifying their global operations beyond traditional Western hubs. 

Experts predict this growth trajectory will continue over the next 2-3 years.

Kumar further highlighted that “India’s cost-effective, highly skilled talent pool, robust digital infrastructure, and evolving policy framework make it an attractive destination. 

“The emergence of Tier-II cities such as Ahmedabad, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, and Coimbatore as viable alternatives to metropolitan areas further strengthens India’s position as a GCC powerhouse.”

For instance, Takeda, a Japanese biopharmaceutical giant, recently launched its innovation capability centre (ICC) in Asia in Bengaluru. The centre will use AI and digital technologies to drive research and improve healthcare. 

“The launch of our Bengaluru ICC is a pivotal moment in Takeda’s digital transformation journey,” said chief data and technology officer Gabriele Ricci.

In November 2023, ZEISS, a German optics and optoelectronics leader, opened its GCC in Bengaluru. The centre will tap into India’s IT talent pool to expand ZEISS’s global R&D efforts.

Mizuho Global Services India Pvt Ltd (MGS), a subsidiary of Japan’s Mizuho Bank, has opened a new office at the World Trade Center in Perungudi, Chennai. Since its founding in 2020, MGS has expanded rapidly with offices in Mumbai and Chennai. Currently employing 350 people, the company plans to more than triple its workforce to over 1,000 in the next three years.

The Reason Behind Such Expansion

Experts believe that Europe’s reliance on India for technology operations is increasing, particularly in regions such as France, the Nordics, and the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg). 

This trend is driven by rapid modernisation, a shortage of local tech talent and the need for multilingual support across industries like manufacturing (Industry 4.0), automotive, BFSI, pharma, and retail.

“Traditionally, Europe used to have the nearshore captive centre, which gave them timing benefits,” said the senior director leading GCC in Accenture, “due to war and instability in Europe, mostly in Ukraine and Poland, many financial GCC moved to India. The war has a huge impact.”

The robust GCC ecosystem in India thrives on its skilled workforce, supportive government policies, innovative startups, and a strong network of service providers. 

“Factors such as India’s competitive GCC Policies mushrooming out of several states and the ability to achieve operational efficiencies at scale make it the ideal choice for global firms seeking long-term resilience in their corporate strategies, ”Kumar further mentioned.

However, what truly sets India apart in this next phase of the GCC’s evolution is its ability to create value rather than just a cost arbitrage destination. 

Non-American GCCs are leveraging India not just for talent and operations but for innovation—whether it’s Swiss financial firms setting up AI-powered risk analysis hubs in Bengaluru or Middle Eastern energy giants driving sustainability R&D from Hyderabad. 

With India’s deep integration into global supply chains and its thriving startup ecosystem valued at over $400 billion, GCCs are increasingly tapping into co-innovation models with local firms and digital twin models with their parent companies, unlocking synergies that go far beyond basic outsourcing and ODC. 

As India scales from a service delivery hub to a strategic innovation partner, the future of non-American GCCs in the country is not just about growth—it’s about leadership in global transformation.

Seeking Inspiration from US-Based GCCs

Raghavendra Vaidya, MD and CEO at Daimler Truck Innovation Center India (DTICI), highlighted the growing trend of companies setting up engineering centres in India. He noted that while “the initial push came from US-based conglomerates,” in recent times, “many Western and Central European companies have been establishing their presence here.”

He emphasised that the process has become highly structured: “The playbook has been perfected over the last few decades… it is almost a cookie-cutter approach if you have a real intention of doing it.” Companies today can easily reference existing models and successfully establish their own centres.

A key driver behind this trend is the transformation happening in Western and Central Europe, where companies are realising that “they can’t do all of their engineering by themselves in the headquarters because there are so many problems to be solved.” Observing their peers successfully setting up engineering centres in India, they recognise the value such centres bring to their parent organisations.

While IT services are relatively easy to establish, “setting up an engineering centre is difficult.” However, India remains “the talent market in the world for ER&D,” and the proven success of GCCs in driving innovation and value has instilled confidence among organisations looking to follow suit.

The post US GCC Centres Lead in India, Non-US Firms Catching Up appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

When the data science team at Johnson & Johnson in India faced the daunting challenge of extracting text from nearly 4 million documents, they had two choices. They could either rely on third-party Optical Character Recognition (OCR) services at a significant cost or develop an in-house solution tailored to their needs. 

Venkata Karthik T, senior manager of data science at Johnson & Johnson, revealed his journey at MLDS 2025 and offered an insightful look into how necessity, innovation, and cost constraints led them to build a powerful, scalable OCR tool.

“At the end of the day, cost is a very critical factor for any project. So taking care of that is very important,” Karthik explained. Additionally, using third-party solutions raised privacy concerns. 

The project, spanning over a year with multiple iterations, demonstrated the power of in-house innovation. “It’s more like we picked up what was really important and started implementing them. 95% of the problem gets solved with these things,” Karthik noted.

Handling sensitive internal documents required greater control over the data. Moreover, building an internal tool offered the advantage of customisation, enabling them to tailor the OCR engine to various use cases beyond document scanning.

The Thought Process Behind Building the Tool In-House

Karthik said that his team evaluated multiple OCR frameworks, prioritising activity metrics, capabilities, and usability. They created datasets for testing, categorising documents into digital, noisy, and handwritten types. 

Digital documents were generated using SynthTIGER, noisy documents sourced from the FunSD dataset, and handwritten text taken from the IAM dataset. After rigorous testing, they narrowed their focus to four key OCR models: PaddleOCR, Tesseract, EasyOCR, and HDR Pipeline. 

Each framework had its strengths and weaknesses. PaddleOCR excelled at table extraction but struggled with dense text. Tesseract worked well on dense text but had issues with tables. HDR Pipeline performed best for handwritten text. 

“So instead of choosing one, we combined PaddleOCR and Tesseract. We took both outputs and saw which one had the highest confidence score. If one model identified text and another missed it, we merged results, improving overall accuracy,” Karthik said. 

The existing process was straightforward: send PDFs or images to a third-party service, extract text, and use it for downstream applications. However, the team sought to replicate and improve this with their own OCR pipeline. 

The tool was evaluated using word error rate (WER), character error rate (CER), and accuracy. While third-party APIs achieved nearly 98-99% accuracy on digital and noisy documents, the hybrid model significantly improved internal performance. HDR Pipeline was particularly effective for handwritten text, achieving 85% accuracy.

How AI Helped with Cost – the Biggest Factor

Cost efficiency was undoubtedly another key consideration. “We don’t want the API up and running all day. It’s an unnecessary cost,” Karthik said. Instead of a costly front-end UI, the team deployed a backend API on Kubernetes. They optimised infrastructure using batch processing, streaming mode, and event-based triggering to ensure the system ran only when needed.

To further refine text extraction, the team introduced AI-powered error correction. Using ChatGPT for low-confidence words improved accuracy by 3%. They also experimented with fine-tuned BERT models to correct OCR mistakes without relying on expensive third-party APIs.

Additionally, they developed six pre-built extraction templates to streamline data retrieval. These templates allowed users to specify areas of interest, such as key-value pairs, structured tables, or spatial relationships within documents. This reduced the need for manual adjustments and sped up adoption within the organisation.

Since many documents contained tabular data, the team leveraged Microsoft’s Table Transformer. This model identified tables and their components, including rows, columns, and headers, before feeding them into PaddleOCR for text extraction.

For barcodes, they used a combination of YOLOv5 for detection and multiple open-source decoders. If these failed, they applied super-resolution techniques to enhance barcode clarity, boosting decoding accuracy to 84%.

Despite significant progress, Karthik said that challenges remain with handwritten text, where even humans struggle to decipher poor handwriting. However, the team is optimistic about integrating vision-language models (VLMs) like OCR-free RAG models to bypass traditional OCR altogether.

The post How Johnson & Johnson India Built an In-House OCR Tool to Scan 4 Million Documents appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Daimler Truck is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of commercial vehicles, including trucks and buses. The company operates globally across four key regions—Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and China.

Daimler Truck Innovation Centre India (DTICI) is a GCC based in Bengaluru, established three years ago.

It focuses on providing IT and engineering solutions for all segments, products, and regions of Daimler Truck. “Our goal is…to provide world-class engineering and IT solutions to our customers and products,” Raghavendra Vaidya, managing director and CEO of DTICI, told AIM. 

The RAG Conversation

Vaidya also reaffirmed that retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architecture remains a valuable approach. “I don’t think RAG architecture is dead. It’s working well for us,” the representative said. Companies can either retrain a model with their data or use RAG to enhance a GPT model. Both methods have their own advantages.

Even major companies like Microsoft support RAG by offering models that help vectorise data efficiently, as per Vaidya. 

However, the conversation around RAG is not new.

RAG has revolutionised how AI systems process and respond to user queries by using external knowledge sources. However, as it doesn’t meet all the diverse needs of modern enterprises, everyone wants to replace RAG with something new.

This is where agentic RAG comes into play. Agentic RAG represents an advanced architecture that combines the foundational principles of RAG with the autonomy and flexibility of AI agents. It promises a future where AI systems are more adaptive, proactive, and intelligent.

Furthermore, last year, Google released its new Gemma model, DataGemma. While the world is experimenting with RAG to reduce hallucinations and increase accuracy, Google decided to use retrieval interleaved generation (RIG). This technique integrates LLMs with Data Commons, an open-source database of public data.

DTICI is not Building LLMs

Vaidya highlighted that DTICI is not building large language models (LLMs) but is currently using OpenAI’s LLM for internal purposes. 

Machine learning (ML) remains a core focus, even though the term is less commonly used today, he further said. For over a decade, the company has been developing ML models from scratch, supported by a skilled team of data scientists and engineers who collaborate with business experts across different functions.

In the past year, the company elevated its approach by assigning accountability for AI and data initiatives to its Bengaluru team. 

Regarding GenAI, DTICI is currently running multiple pilot projects to assess its potential impact. The company has already seen success in using Microsoft Copilot and GitHub Copilot to improve software development productivity, whether through code generation, test case creation, or code quality validation.

Beyond software engineering, DTICI is exploring GenAI in sales, procurement, and after-sales. 

Rather than taking a technology-first approach, the company prioritises business needs. “We don’t bring in the technology, dabble and see what it can do. That’s not the approach we’re taking. We’re taking a business approach where we identify areas where it can produce business results and provide benefits, either to the top line or efficiency or the bottom line. And then we go and build a pilot around it,” Vaidya said. 

DTICI also built a sandbox on Azure about a year ago, using an older version of OpenAI’s language model. 

According to Vaidya, DTICI has been using the model for some time and finds it effective. It has created internal chatbots and assistants that use OpenAI’s language model and its own secure data. 

Vaidya acknowledged that training a model with its own data would be better, but it would take excessive time and money. Instead, DTICI prefers its current approach and believes it to be a good balance.

DTICI’s Bengaluru Narrative

Vaidya said that Bengaluru remains the top choice for talent in India, with its unmatched depth and variety of skilled professionals. “The length, breadth, and depth of talent you have in Bengaluru is unmatched.”

He believes that as global capability centres (GCCs) grow, they may expand to other cities where talent is available. Some of them have successfully established operations in multiple locations. However, Bengaluru remains the first choice for new GCCs, and DTICI has no recent plans to expand to tier-2 cities.

At DTICI Bengaluru, the focus is on engineering and IT. The team develops intelligent software for trucks and buses. Most of the innovation and investment are happening in IT, software, and electronics. Highlighting this trend, Vaidya said, “If you want to increase the frequency of innovation, or you want to innovate faster, then I think software and electronics is the place to be.”

In IT, the company is deeply focused on using data, ML, and artificial intelligence.

Vaidya revealed that a major project of predictive maintenance, directed from Bengaluru, aims to predict part failures using analytics and ML instead of traditional physics-based methods. 

The system analyses real-time truck data to forecast when a part is likely to fail. However, accuracy is critical for this to be effective. “If the model is not 85% or more accurate, then nobody is going to buy it,” Vaidya said.

Since customers rely on these predictions to replace parts before failure, achieving high accuracy is essential. DTICI has been deploying these solutions over the past few years, and they have proven extremely effective in terms of profitability and cutting warranty costs.

“It is pretty simple; you get to work on the bleeding edge of the technology and the work that you do makes either a product better or customers more profitable,” Vaidya concluded.

The post How Daimler Truck is Using RAG Architecture for Smarter Solutions appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

The Union Budget 2025-26 has introduced several initiatives specifically aimed at powering India’s technology ecosystem and ensuring talent development.

One of the standout measures is the Deeptech Fund of Funds (FoF), which, along with a ₹10,000 crore boost for startups, is set to transform Global Capability Centres (GCCs) by providing access to skilled professionals in fields like artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, and cloud computing.

This particular measure is essential, given that over 1,580 GCCs in India employ 1.66 million people, and the number is only increasing. However, many industry leaders and experts have stressed that finding the right talent has become a bigger challenge than building office spaces, and some GCCs are also suffering due to hiring challenges.

Aparna Iyer, CFO at Wipro Limited, said, “With AI becoming an essential tool for a tech-powered economy, it is heartening to see the introduction of Centres of Excellence (CoE) for AI in education. To position India as a leader in the global AI race, it is imperative to prioritise investment in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) talent.”

Bridging the Skill Gap in GCCs

Formulating a national framework to guide states in promoting GCCs is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. 

Suresh Ramamoorthy, country head of Lingaro India, stated, “The…national framework for GCCs…will provide a structured roadmap for one of the fastest-growing sectors in India.”

He added that with over 1,700 GCCs employing nearly 1.9 million professionals, the national framework for GCCs will help strengthen India’s position as a hub for advanced technology solutions while also helping drive deeper collaboration between industry and academia.

GCCs have already become an integral part of India’s tech industry, with companies setting up innovation hubs to develop AI-driven solutions, automation systems, and next-generation software. 

However, hiring the right talent has been a major challenge, as pointed out by many industry leaders. The deeptech FoF is expected to address this by enhancing skill development programs and creating a strong talent pipeline.

“With strategic investments in education, skilling, and inclusion, the Union Budget 2025-26 lays the foundation for a future-ready workforce and an inclusive growth story,” said Dhriti Prasanna Mahanta, vice-president of  TeamLease Degree Apprenticeship.

He also emphasised that the 10,000 fellowships for tech research at IITs and IISc under the Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship (PMRF) Scheme will help build a talent pool ready for deep-tech innovations.

However, he also suggested that to maximise impact, the program must integrate industry internships similar to a Prime Minister’s Internship Scheme (PMIS).

“Engaging the top 20 Indian tech companies to co-create flexible, agile, and responsive training modules will further enhance the program’s effectiveness,” Mahanta added. By collaborating with global tech giants, these fellowships could also offer international internship opportunities and enhance exposure to real-world AI applications.

How AI Internships Can Shape Future Talent

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has already introduced a credit-based system for future skill courses like AI and machine learning (ML). AI internships are now a core part of practical learning, where students gain hands-on experience with advanced AI tools and industry-led projects.

According to Mahanta, these internships offer an average stipend of up to ₹35,000 and upon completion, interns can command salaries between ₹8-10 lakh per annum. This clearly indicates that specialised AI skills will be in high demand, making such programs crucial for GCCs looking to build AI-driven solutions.

GCCs Expanding to Tier-2 Cities

While Bengaluru and Hyderabad have traditionally been India’s top GCC hubs, the government is now encouraging their expansion to tier-2 cities. With improved infrastructure and new talent pools, cities like Chandigarh and Indore are emerging as potential hubs.

Vineet Dhawan, CEO of Digital Convergence Technologies (DCT), welcomed this development, stating, “We are excited to see how the national framework for promoting GCCs in emerging tier-2 cities will encourage talent availability, infrastructure improvement, and industry outreach.”

He also noted that the ₹20,000 crore allocated for private-sector research, development, and innovation will accelerate projects in AI, cloud computing, and cybersecurity, further fueling talent demand.

The Union Budget 2025 underscores the government’s proactive efforts to drive the expansion of GCCs in India, particularly in emerging tier-2 cities. 

Chandan Barve, VP and chief administrative officer of Sun Life Global Solutions, said that this initiative, with its strong focus on talent availability, infrastructure development, and regulatory reforms, will create new opportunities for both organisations and the country’s employable youth. 

He further added that the commitment to a national framework for GCCs strengthens India’s role as a “global hub fostering deeper innovation”, which will deliver state-of-the-art technology services, and drive operational excellence.

In addition, Garima Mitra, co-founder of Treelife, highlighted in her LinkedIn post that the five-year extension of the sunset clause in GIFT City for tax-neutral relocation of foreign funds reflects a strong positive sentiment about the government’s intent to develop GIFT City. 

She added that tax clarity for alternative investment funds (AIFs) and the removal of tax collected at source (TCS) on securities will create a more streamlined investment ecosystem, reinforcing the government’s commitment to fostering a more investor-friendly environment.

By combining fellowships, AI internships, industry collaborations, and startup support, India is taking strong steps toward becoming a global leader in deeptech innovation.

With government initiatives, industry partnerships, and startup growth, the future of talent management in India’s GCCs looks promising.

The post Deeptech Fund of Funds – A Game Changer for Talent Management in GCCs appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Bengaluru is often referred to as the ‘Silicon Valley of India’ and boasts a thriving ecosystem of tech parks. With its pleasant climate, a massive pool of skilled talent, and modern infrastructure, the city has become a magnet for innovation. It is no surprise that Bengaluru is home to over 30 IT parks – each playing a pivotal role in shaping India’s tech landscape.

Among these, flagship asset of Embassy REIT called as Embassy Manyata Business Park (EMBP) stands out as the most sought-after destination for global capability centres (GCCs). But what makes it so special?

Why Manyata Business Park Stands Out

EMBP stands out as one of the largest business parks in the nation and is the first privately owned Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the city. The park’s campus spans 121 acres and has about 11 million square feet of Grade A office space as mentioned by Yashasvi Rathore, manager of legal services at Inductus.

The campus houses over 50 multinational companies, including IBM, Target, Philips, Fidelity, and Nokia, and supports a daily workforce of over 1.50 lakh employees. Its strategic location – just 25 km from Kempegowda International Airport – makes it an ideal choice for global operations.

The rise of EMBP reflects the culmination of decades of evolution within Bengaluru’s IT ecosystem. Over the last 20 years, the city has matured into a global technology powerhouse with over 400 R&D centres, over 12,000 startups, and a tech talent pool exceeding 1.5 million professionals. 

As GCCs tend to cluster around major tech hubs, EMBP offers the perfect environment for innovation, collaboration, and growth.

“GCCs here aren’t just delivery centres; they lead in cutting-edge R&D, artificial intelligence (AI), fintech innovation, and digital transformation,” said Rathore. For instance, Illumina’s centre focuses on genomics research, while Target’s hub drives innovation in retail technology. These are mere glimpses of the groundbreaking work being done in EMBP.

A Perfect Mix of Talent, Infrastructure, and Policy

EMBP offers world-class infrastructure, including LEED-certified buildings, on-site residential apartments, five-star hotels, and wellness facilities.

On the policy front, Karnataka has been instrumental in fostering GCC growth. Initiatives like the Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM) and the IT Policy 2020-2025 provide support through grants, R&D funding, skill development programs, and incentives for sustainable operations. These efforts ensure that global companies can scale efficiently without compromising on quality.

Other Tech Parks in Competition

According to The NoBroker Times, Bagmane Tech Park spans 42 acres and hosts several well-known companies, including Oracle, Texas Instruments, Nike, and Dell.

Embassy TechVillage, a massive 80-acre development in Bengaluru’s IT corridor along Sarjapur-Marathahalli Outer Ring Road, is home to over 40 corporate tenants. Some of the big names in the campus include CSG, Cisco, Eli Lilly, and Flipkart. The campus isn’t just about offices – it also features commercial spaces, retail outlets, and hospitality options.

Meanwhile, RMZ Ecospace, spread across 25 acres, is home to offices of several renowned companies, including Broadcom, RMZ Corp, Microland, and Capgemini. This 12-year-old eco-friendly business park is located in the city’s new central business district along the Outer Ring Road. Strategically positioned at the junction of Sarjapur and Marathahalli roads, Ecospace offers a prime location for businesses in the city’s growing tech corridor.

According to a Reddit user, in the last 10 years, Mahadevapura saw development and Sarjapur Road, which was previously deserted, is now flourishing. “While I don’t see any increase in IT companies in North Bengaluru, real estate prices have definitely increased. In fact, Microsoft recently moved its offices from EMBP in North Bengaluru to Lavelle Road and Sarjapur Road.”

The user added that with major developers like Prestige and Brigade actively promoting Sarjapur as the next big tech hub, it’s unlikely that new tech parks will emerge in North Bengaluru anytime soon. 

The region still lacks strong momentum for IT expansion. While the upcoming Aerospace Park and other projects might attract companies from different sectors, software firms are unlikely to shift there at least in the next 10-15 years. Meanwhile, Sarjapur is expected to witness significant growth and development in the tech space.

Bengaluru Airport City Limited (BACL), a subsidiary of Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL), has started building a 2 million square feet business park.

This project, announced by BIAL, is part of Karnataka’s new Global Capability Centres (GCC) Policy for 2024-2029.

The aim is to establish Bengaluru as a global hub for GCCs, creating 3.5 lakh jobs and contributing $50 billion to the state’s economy, according to PTI.

The Evolution of Bengaluru’s IT Landscape

Bengaluru’s journey as a tech hub began in the 1990s with the liberalisation of the Indian economy. Established in 1994, the International Tech Park Bangalore (ITPB) was the city’s first IT park, which set the stage for the rapid growth that followed. Tech parks like Electronic City, Bagmane Tech Park, and EMBP soon joined the fold and attracted global giants like Infosys, Wipro, and TCS.

As the industry grew, newer tech parks emerged along the Outer Ring Road and in North Bengaluru, offering better connectivity and sophisticated infrastructure. Today, the city hosts 38% of India’s over 1,800 GCCs, with EMBP shining as a leader.

The post Why GCCs Love Manyata Tech Park? appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

The Union Budget 2025 indicates the government’s shifting focus towards tier-2 cities for the expansion of global capability centres (GCCs), moving beyond traditional hubs like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, and Pune. 

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has highlighted plans to boost talent, develop infrastructure, and introduce industry-friendly policies in tier-2 cities. 

To boost talent, the government has announced the establishment of a centre of excellence in AI for education and the awarding of 10,000 new fellowships to students at IITs and IISc over the next five years.

Industry leaders had already anticipated this development. 

Alouk Kumar, founder and CEO of Inductus, said, “The success of GCCs in India to the tune of 70% depends upon the right kind of resources.” He pointed out that finding skilled talent is now a bigger challenge than setting up office spaces, leading some GCCs to struggle with hiring difficulties. 

Kumar proposed expanding beyond traditional locations to leverage the talent available in tier-2 cities.

Raghavendra Vaidya, MD and CEO of Daimler Truck Innovation Center India said, “We hope the government can streamline the process of running a GCC from a tax and infrastructure standpoint. Investing in infrastructure would be greatly beneficial.”

The Zinnov-Nasscom India GCC Landscape report shows a rise in tier-2 and tier-3 city GCCs, increasing from 5% in FY2019 to 7% in FY2024. These Nano GCCs are expected to grow by 15-20% by 2025, with 25-30% growth projected in the following years.

According to AIM Research, cities like Chandigarh and Indore, each housing 4% of total GCCs, are becoming new hotspots for expansion. While Bengaluru and Hyderabad are still leading, many companies are exploring alternative locations to tap into skilled graduates from smaller cities.

With tier-2 cities home to many engineering, IT, and business institutions, experts believe this shift will help GCCs find the right talent while spreading economic benefits across more regions.

In a major push for education and skill development, the finance minister announced a CoE in Artificial Intelligence for Education with a total outlay of INR 500 crore. This initiative builds on the three AI centres set up in 2023 for agriculture, healthcare, and sustainable cities.

Sitharaman also revealed plans for five National Centres of Excellence for Skilling, designed to equip the youth with industry-relevant expertise. “These centres will be set up with global partnerships to support Make for India and Make for the World manufacturing,” Sitharaman stated. 

The initiative will cover curriculum design, trainer training, a skill certification framework, and regular assessments.

To strengthen higher education, the government is investing in the expansion of IIT infrastructure. Over the past decade, student intake at IITs has doubled from 65,000 to 1.35 lakh. 

Additional facilities will be developed at five IITs established post-2014, creating space for 6,500 more students. Hostel and other infrastructure capacity at IIT Patna will also be expanded

The post Budget 2025: Govt Pushes for GCCs in Tier-2 Cities, Unveils AI Centre of Excellence appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

India’s global capability centre (GCC) journey has been remarkable, with over 1,580 GCCs employing 1.66 million people in the country. India has established itself as a global leader in the GCC space owing to its strong technology ecosystem, talent availability, cost advantages, and political stability in an uncertain world.

However, a new factor that could reshape this landscape has emerged: DeepSeek. Experts see it as a game changer, highlighting the need for India to be more agile and flexible in its policies. To stay ahead, rapid policy adaptation and proactive decision-making will be essential.

In an interview with AIM, Alouk Kumar, founder and CEO of Inductus, said the Indian government, in its last Economic Survey, projected that GCCs would contribute 3.5% of the total GDP by 2030.

However, the Inductus team’s research suggests that this number could cross around 5%, especially with the rise of DeepSeek, which could accelerate GCC expansion in India.

Kumar said that after DeepSeek, most offshore companies and global giants have clearly realised that they must reduce the cost of operation, considering China reportedly spent just $5 million to build the AI company.

A Shift Beyond Metro Cities

India’s leading GCC hubs – Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, and Pune – have traditionally been the preferred locations for setting up the centres. However, growth in these cities is slowing down due to rising costs, infrastructure strain, and the shift towards remote work.

Regarding the Budget expectations for 2025, Raghavendra Vaidya, MD and CEO of Daimler Truck Innovation Center India (DTICI), said, “We hope the government can streamline the process of running a GCC from a tax and infrastructure standpoint and can invest in more infrastructure as it would be greatly beneficial.”

This has prompted many companies to explore alternative locations, including countries outside India. To retain its leadership in the GCC sector, India needs to decentralise operations and focus on Tier-2 cities.

“The success of GCCs in India to the tune of 70% depends upon the right kind of resources,” Kumar pointed out. Finding the right talent has become a bigger challenge than building office spaces, and “some of the GCCs are also suffering” due to hiring difficulties.

A possible solution, according to Kumar, is to “expand the base out of a particular location”. Currently, most GCCs are concentrated in the southern states or one or two particular locations. However, many Tier-2 cities now have “several good educational institutions”, providing a strong talent pipeline.

Government’s Role in Promoting Tier-2 Cities

For this expansion to be successful, Kumar highlighted that Budget 2025 should “come out with some kind of incentive for setting up GCCs in Tier-2 cities”. Such initiatives could benefit locations such as Hubballi, Jaipur, Trivandrum, and others, reducing the pressure on metros while promoting inclusive economic growth.

Kumar highlights that industry leaders hope for policies in the upcoming Budget that support innovation hubs and talent development. Government initiatives must be aligned with recent industry shifts, such as DeepSeek, which is being seen as a major turning point for India’s GCC sector.

Moreover, India needs to stay competitive globally. “The next war on the horizon is going to be fought on cost, innovation and R&D,” Kumar added. Global companies are now looking to cut operational costs, and offshoring has become a necessity.

Kumar further elaborated that increasing R&D spending is essential for India to “sustain and take forward this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” in the evolving global landscape. Currently, India’s R&D expenditure stands at 0.7% of GDP, but experts advocate raising it to 1.5% to maintain competitiveness and drive innovation. Kumar suggested that India should “extend or expand it to 1.5% of the GDP at a minimum” to ensure sufficient investment in R&D.

Countries like Vietnam and Singapore offer three to five years of tax holidays on the establishment of GCCs. Kumar believes that the Indian government might consider introducing similar tax incentives. 

Besides, linking incentives to hiring numbers could provide further motivation for global firms to expand in India. “If India can come out with that kind of tax incentive, they can have tax holidays. But apart from that, they can also link it up with the number of deployments and number of hirings.”

Furthermore, Deloitte’s Budget Expectations 2025 report for GCC also highlights that considering GCCs have now transformed from “merely back offices but drivers of innovation in their business groups”, the government may evaluate providing certain tax breaks for GCCs. This includes a tax holiday for a certain number of years or a concessional tax rate of 15%, akin to the concession provided under Section 115BAB to the entities in the manufacturing sector that are set up after April 1, 2019 and have started manufacturing by March 31, 2024.

India Needs a Unified GCC Policy

While individual states like Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu have introduced their own GCC policies, there is no unified national policy to streamline expansion. A leader in the industry pointed out that this creates confusion for companies looking to invest in India.

A single-window system in Delhi could make the process easier. “New Delhi should have some kind of single-window system or advisory support where they can go,” Kumar suggested.

Companies from different industries have different requirements. According to Kumar, if someone wants to set up a GCC in India for financial services, they can’t go to Bengaluru or Hyderabad. “Probably, they would prefer to go down to Mumbai.” A structured approach, in this case, would help create sector-specific hubs across different cities.

The post Can Budget 2025 Help India Retain its GCC Leadership appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Siemens Technology and Services (STS), a global capability centre of Siemens AG, seems to hold a special place for its Indian team, which plays a crucial role in the company’s global journey of innovation and digitalisation.

Siemens AG, the parent company, is a technology company focused on industry, infrastructure, digital transformation, transport as well as the transmission and generation of electrical power.

In an interview with AIM, Pankaj Vyas, CEO and managing director of STS, explained, “Our focus is on owning, accelerating, and innovating – making India the digitalisation hub for Siemens globally.”

Vyas added that India is not just an extension anymore; it is an integral part of Siemens’ global innovation strategy.

Speaking about the growth of STS in India, Vyas pointed out that the organisation started as an extension of Siemens’ business units globally. Over the years, India has transformed into a core innovation and digitalisation hub for the company.

Today, STS in India comprises over 9,000 professionals, with more than 6,000 focused on development and innovation. 

Vyas said the organisation is building expertise in technology, product, and business know-how. The team is actively involved in the design, architecture, development, and lifecycle management of Siemens products.

What is so Special about the Indian Team

Citing two examples, Vyas highlighted how Indian teams have significantly contributed to STS’ innovation worldwide.

One such contribution is SiGreen – a cloud-based platform that helps supply chain heads monitor their carbon footprint and ensure sustainability. Developed largely in India, this solution has already won Siemens’ prestigious Werner VonSiemens Awards for innovation.

Another notable innovation by the India team is Circularity 360 – a platform designed to optimise material and component selection and ensure products are sustainable from the design stage itself.

According to Vyas, judging by the emissions associated with products, 80% of product-related decisions are made during the design phase. If sustainability aspects are not prioritised during the design phase, it becomes difficult to address them later.

A key element of sustainable design is the selection of components and the incorporation of circularity principles. “This involves considering factors such as whether a product is using substances of concern and if it aligns with strategies like reusability, remanufacturing and whatnot,” Vyas further added.

These challenges have prompted the introduction of Circularity 360, which is reportedly going for patent and has been completely funded by headquarters.

“STS is also at the forefront of emerging technologies like AI, the internet of things (IoT), industrial edge, and digital twin solutions. Smarter field devices are the foundation for everything else,” said Vyas. 

Siemens’ devices, now connected through IoT and secured with advanced cybersecurity protocols, are designed to gather and transmit valuable data. This data is then utilised for applications ranging from predictive AI for anomaly detection in manufacturing to generative AI for digital twins and other advanced use cases.

Industrial Copilot as a Game Changer

Siemens Industrial Copilot, an AI-powered assistant, is an innovation driven by Indian talent that uses multimodality. The concept of the industrial copilot uses multimodality. “You take a voice as a modality, and you convert it into actions,” Vyas explained, demonstrating the integration of different modes of input and output.

This system allows operators to interact with machines using natural language, streamlining operations and reducing training time. As Vyas mentioned, it is an example of how to take human-machine collaboration to the next level. “It’s like having a smart assistant you can talk to in any language,” Vyas said, hinting at the potential for Indian languages in future versions.

Vyas also pointed out that the issue of employability arises due to the challenges of training individuals on a large scale. Referring to Industrial Copilot, Vyas said, “If you can have systems which you can operate with a lesser [amount of] training, then that means your people can be employed much faster and at a much bigger scale.”

Furthermore, the capability of interacting with machines in local languages is emphasised as a transformative factor. This approach eliminates the need for extensive manual learning.

Road Ahead

When asked about the future of STS in India, Vyas pointed out three focus areas – ownership, acceleration, and innovation. He believes Indian teams will continue to lead high-value projects globally driven by advancements in AI and digitalisation.

While Siemens has no immediate plans to expand to tier 2 or tier 3 cities, Vyas acknowledged the potential of such locations, particularly with government incentives and improving infrastructure.

Additionally, Vyas mentioned that STS is adding a “new value layer” focused on data rather than just devices, which positions India well for growth.

Confirming the elaborate infrastructure in Bengaluru, Vyas said, “In our office, we have 50 labs.” This highlights the importance of proximity to hardware setups in STS’ operations.

The focus of STS is on connecting the real and digital world with a commitment to use data sourced from the real field and real devices. This approach maximises the utilisation of current locations and prioritises these over exploring tier 2 and tier 3 cities.

Vyas described the STS’s culture as one rooted in competence, agility, collaboration, and innovation. “It’s not about cost arbitrage anymore; it’s about adding value,” he said. Siemens is fostering a collaborative environment that encourages speaking up, challenging the status quo, and innovating.The company’s diversity initiatives are also noteworthy, with women making up approximately 32% of its workforce. “We aim to create a culture of respect and inclusivity while staying agile to meet future demands,” Vyas added.

The post How India Became the Core of Siemens Technology and Services’ Global Strategy appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Hexagon AB, a global leader in digital reality solutions like digital twins, GNSS, and LiDAR, continues to make strides in advancing R&D and agentic AI. Interestingly, the Stockholm-based company attributes a lot of this R&D to its Hyderabad global capability centre (GCC).

Hexagon R&D India in Hyderabad has around 2,200 employees. Burkhard Boeckem, CTO at Hexagon AB, recently visited the Hyderabad GCC during the company’s Tech Day event and highlighted the impact that the centre is creating for the company’s global operations.

Reflecting on the significance of the centre, Boeckem told AIM that Hyderabad is one of Hexagon’s three main R&D centres globally, besides Switzerland and the US. “The focus here is primarily on R&D, with some service functions closely aligned to our innovation initiatives,” Boeckem said.

The centre fosters strong collaborations with technology giants like AWS and Microsoft, as well as local and global academia. “The partnerships we have built here are instrumental in driving innovation. We invited our partners to the Tech Day, and it’s evident that 2025 will be the year of agents in AI,” Boeckem remarked.

The Future is All About Agentic AI

Hexagon’s approach to AI has been strategic and evolutionary. Boeckem said that from the early adoption of deep learning in 2012 to embracing generative AI in 2018, the company has consistently been ahead of industry trends. 

“Our work revolves around taking real-world data and creating digital twins with metrology-grade accuracy, leveraging machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI to gain insights and actionable intelligence,” he said. 

Boeckem explained that the research team, which is based in Hyderabad, facilitates much of this work. 

The same is true for agentic AI. Boeckem said that these systems, which can autonomously make decisions and interact with their environment, are poised to transform industries. 

“Hexagon’s tagline, ‘Shaping Reality’ aligns perfectly with agentic AI,” Boeckem said that whether it’s an autonomous flying laser scanner or off-road autonomy in mining, Hexagon’s focus is on increasing autonomy in decision-making.

Hexagon’s R&D efforts span 28 industries, with divisions dedicated to geosystems, manufacturing intelligence, asset lifecycle intelligence, safety infrastructure, and autonomous solutions. The Hyderabad GCC plays a pivotal role in these domains by housing the global innovation hub—a 400-strong team focused on this innovation.

“The talent pool here [in Hyderabad] is phenomenal, and we are excited about the future of agentic AI and its potential to transform industries,” Boeckem said, adding that the company spends 15% of its revenue back into R&D, Hyderabad being one of the biggest centres for it.

AI at the Edge and in the Right Places

Hexagon’s focus is on bringing agentic AI into the engineering, mining, and construction operations instead of focusing on cars and driving, which Boeckem calls manufacturing intelligence. “Let the Bosch and Continentals of the world take it and bring it to scalability, Hexagon is focused on process optimisation and inspection automation.” 

Boeckem said that autonomous vehicles are something that the company focuses on, but in industrial use cases instead of on-road driving.

The company collaborates with solution providers like Boston Dynamics and Airbus to create products that solve problems. For example, Hexagon created the BLK2FLY which won the Time Innovation of the Year award in 2022. It has amazing obstacle avoidance and tracking capabilities.

A key focus area for Hexagon is AI at the edge, enabling real-time data processing and insights at the device level. Boeckem highlighted the Aura face scanner, a product developed with significant contributions from the Hyderabad team. 

Aura reconstructs a 3D digital twin of the face in milliseconds, offering applications in dermatology, plastic surgery, and medical aesthetics. The scanner leverages AI at the edge to provide unparalleled insights with precision. 

With its innovative system that resembles a sleek, golden monitor, Aura is much more than just a display — it houses 13 cameras along with an advanced illumination system. This technology can reconstruct a highly detailed digital twin of your face in a millisecond. 

It enables them to analyse facial features in 3D, offering insights into a range of concerns, from assessing UV damage and brown spots to evaluating pore conditions. It also allows them to simulate the potential effects of cosmetic procedures, such as Botox injections or facelifts, providing a clear visualisation of the expected results.

Additionally, the use of AI at the edge, particularly agentic AI, is an important aspect to consider. As agentic AI becomes more prevalent, there is a growing focus on ethical and regulatory considerations. Ensuring that these systems operate safely and fairly is crucial, especially in terms of privacy protection—such as when using facial scanning technology.

Despite this belief in agentic AI, Boeckem is also a firm believer in teamwork and does not completely agree that there would be companies that work with just AI agents. “The inspiring and motivating things we are doing at Hexagon R&D India… cannot be replaced by AI agents. The most successful companies find the right balance between human ingenuity and AI,” Boeckem said, adding that Jensen Huang’s idea of the future about physical AI is absolutely true.

He believes that though humanoids might not be in people’s homes, we might see them in dangerous and life-threatening places for humans. “By 2026, we would have probably exhausted all the possibilities of a prompt and offer of a large language model. I think then it’d be time to move on to the next chapter.”

The post Hexagon’s Hyderabad GCC Ushers Agentic AI, Ploughs 15% of Revenue Back into R&D appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India have emerged as innovation hubs, focusing on building advanced skills and capabilities to accelerate their time-to-market. However, the Indian government’s recent regulatory proposals could pose roadblocks to GCCs, which thrive on agility and cost efficiency. 

On November 9, 2023, the IT ministry constituted a sub-committee to identify the gaps and recommend a framework for AI governance. Last year, the government proposed AI guidelines based on the AI Governance Guidelines Development report. If enforced, these guidelines could potentially hinder GCC growth in India.

Report vs Concerns

However, such issues are not new to the competition laws in India or globally. The Competition Commission of India oversees cases of abuse of dominance, vertical integration, and similar concerns.

According to the report, one of the major concerns about unfair trade practices stemming from the abuse of dominance by a few entities controlling large AI systems is relevant. This is particularly due to the concentration of computational power and data infrastructure in a few hands. 

However, as technology evolves, challenges like the shortage of GPUs drive further innovation, encouraging the development of AI models that are less dependent on GPUs. The ongoing development of AI is likely to create new scenarios that test regulatory frameworks. 

For instance, it could lead to algorithmic collusion, in which algorithms enable coordinated behaviour between entities without explicit communication. 

Assessing “market dominance” and “abuse of dominance” in the AI ecosystem will require regulators to continuously monitor and analyse its shifting dynamics. 

Techno-legal measures can play a crucial role in helping regulators model the broader impact of AI systems and applications, ensuring a balanced and fair ecosystem.

How Will it Play Out for GCCs?

Arijit Mitra, managing director at BEAT, Acuity Knowledge Partners, told AIM, “Instead of rushing into premature regulations, the government should focus on providing opportunities for innovation by making infrastructure and GPUs widely accessible.”

He further mentioned that initiatives like mandatory reporting, liability management across the AI lifecycle, and tools such as watermarking add unnecessary overheads, especially at a time when India should be promoting growth in this emerging field.

Mitra explained that these proposed measures could prematurely burden GCCs with compliance requirements like data protection, accountability, and bias mitigation. “Currently, India lags behind the USA and China in the AI race,” he noted. Such regulations would only stifle innovation and deter experimentation, which is essential for GCCs to remain agile and efficient. 

Mitra suggested a “wait and watch” approach for India to avoid introducing further complexities that could slow down AI adoption. This would allow us to learn from global best practices, observe how AI evolves, and design regulations that are both effective and non-restrictive, he added.

Conversely, experts like Tushar Bisht, senior principal software architect at Sabre, view the AI governance guidelines as a commendable step towards promoting safe and responsible AI integration. 

“These guidelines are a critical step in addressing the challenges posed by AI, such as the risks of deepfakes, AI-generated content, and unchecked use in areas like optimisation, forecasting, classification, and autonomous decision-making,” Bisht said.

He also spoke about the government’s efforts to encourage ethical AI adoption while safeguarding societal interests. Bisht stressed that corporations and educational institutions must complement these efforts by ensuring transparency, bias detection, and privacy protection in AI and ML models. 

However, he added that ethical AI starts with model development, where preventing biases in datasets is as crucial as detecting them post-deployment. Balancing personalisation with privacy concerns is also essential to ensure innovation does not compromise ethical principles.

Ram Rastogi, chairman of the Governance Council for the Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE), stated in a LinkedIn post, “In my opinion, this initiative demonstrates a nuanced understanding of India’s AI landscape.”

He further stated that it would enable “the government to develop robust governance aligned with national priorities, ensuring that sector-specific frameworks are complemented by overarching governance principles”.

According to a Nasscom Community report called ‘Compliance Challenges for GCCs’, “Compliance is both a challenge and an opportunity for GCCs to build trust and resilience.”

The report highlights that “GCCs must adopt proactive strategies such as staying abreast of evolving global tech regulations, embedding ethical guidelines into technology development, and fostering collaboration with regulatory bodies to shape and influence compliance standards.”

What GCCs Mean to India

GCCs deliver tangible outcomes by aligning capability-building initiatives with parent organisations’ goals. They are shaping the future by driving innovation through AI-based solutions. 

Lowe’s Bengaluru team, for instance, has been a key driver of the company’s AI journey. The team has developed critical systems such as omnichannel order management and self-checkout terminals, providing unmatched scalability and flexibility. 

Similarly, Kimberly-Clark’s global AI centre of excellence in Bengaluru supports innovative projects like KC-GPT, a customised version of ChatGPT enriched with the company’s proprietary data, alongside leveraging platforms like Microsoft Azure and OpenAI.

Meanwhile, with over 1.6 million professionals currently employed, the GCC sector is on an upward trajectory. This momentum is expected to continue, with EY projecting the sector to grow from 1,580 GCCs in 2023 to 2,400 by 2030, creating over 4.5 million jobs in India.

The post Will India’s AI Regulations Stunt GCCs’ Growth? appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Over the past two decades, India has evolved from a back-office outsourcing hub to a strategic extension of global businesses and emerged as the powerhouse of global capability centres (GCCs). At the forefront of this transformation is ANSR, India’s leading enabler for GCCs, having partnered with over 130 enterprises to establish their centres in the country. 

While speaking with AIM, Lalit Ahuja, the CEO of ANSR, said that the opportunity for GCCs in India is even greater than anticipated, and the hockey stick growth is just around the corner. “We are at the end of the beginning. The foundations have been laid, and the next decade will see exponential growth,” Ahuja said. 

According to the Q3 GCC reports by ANSR, over 450 Forbes Global 2000 companies operate over 825 GCCs across the country, employing more than 1.3 million professionals. The report predicts that by 2030, India could host over 620 additional GCCs, representing over 32% of Forbes Global 2000 enterprises.

India’s top six cities—Bengaluru, Hyderabad, NCR, Chennai, Pune, and Mumbai—host 95% of the country’s GCCs, with Bengaluru alone accounting for 40%. The city hosts over 285 companies and employs 5.6 lakh professionals. 

Hyderabad follows with over 110 GCCs and 1.90 lakh employees, attracting interest due to its infrastructure, talent availability, and business-friendly policies. 

How Are Tier 2 & 3 Cities Placed for GCCs

“Today, GCCs are driving AI adoption, digital transformation, and modernising technology stacks,” Ahuja explained. GCCs are not just optimising costs but also solving critical business challenges, building R&D capabilities, and enabling product development.

“It’s not just about talent availability. The entire ecosystem matters – real estate, infrastructure, tech parks, quality of life, and accessibility. These factors make Tier 1 cities ideal for GCCs,” he explained. Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities have potential, but they lack the social and business infrastructure required to attract and retain senior talent.

Despite this, there is a rise of nano and micro GCCs in Tier 2 and 3 cities like Mangaluru, Mysuru, the Hubballi-Dharwad-Belagavi cluster, Kalaburagi, Tumakuru, and Shivamogga. 

Earlier, it was reported that the firm is enabling around two to five GCCs per month. Ahuja, however, said that those numbers would be understated for several reasons. 

“A lot of companies that are not thinking of a GCC will be forced to think about a GCC either driven by talent or cost or peer pressure.” Ahuja further said that if their competitors have already established a presence, they will also have to step in to avoid losing competitive advantage. 

He said that there is a bottomless opportunity segment which is the mid-market segment. “[There are] literally millions of companies that will now come and set up nano GCCs, micro GCCs, 10-people GCCs and 50-people GCCs because now size does not matter. Academically, you can be a one-person GCC and still be successful,” he added. 

What About Talent?

While cost-effectiveness remains a key draw for companies establishing GCCs, the narrative has shifted toward value creation. While MNCs are considering Eastern European and other South Asian countries, India, with its large English-speaking population, remains the ideal choice for most of them.

Going beyond technology, Ahuja said that some business functions, like a construction company, automobile company or life sciences company, will set up a GCC to do the core work. “The opportunity is ten times bigger than where the GCCs are.”

However, companies are exploring hybrid models to balance costs and access diverse talent pools. Ahuja acknowledged that smaller cities may play a more significant role in the future as infrastructure improves and offers more safety and services. Citing Google’s recent promise to Visakhapatnam as an example, Ahuja said that this would enable more managerial roles in smaller GCCs than just development roles and also allow faster communication.

This shift has also led to a more robust partnership model. GCCs are no longer ‘offshore’ operations but true extensions of their parent organisations. They play a pivotal role in decision-making, innovation, and executing global strategies.

How Does ANSR Come into this Picture?

“Initially, there was scepticism about whether GCCs could handle strategic, high-value work,” Ahuja shared. “Today, that debate is over. Strategic work stays with GCCs, while non-core activities are outsourced. Companies understand that GCCs are integral to their success.”

Ahuja’s journey in the GCC space began in 2005 when he helped Target Corporation establish its first GCC in India. “At the time, there was no playbook for setting up GCCs,” Ahuja reflected. 

Fast forward to today, GCCs are no longer just cost-saving mechanisms. “Companies like Amazon have shown the world how technology can be a core differentiator,” said Ahuja. “This realisation led companies to rethink their approach and invest heavily in building technology capabilities.”

GCCs now contribute nearly one-third of India’s IT sector, with 1,600 centres employing over 1.66 million professionals. They are the fastest-growing segment of India’s tech ecosystem. When it comes to providing this huge amount of talent, ANSR invested in building a community called Talent500, which has around 2.5 million people and includes roles from managers to rocket scientists. 

ANSR’s end-to-end service model is one of the key reasons behind it becoming synonymous with GCC success. From the inception of an idea to a fully operational GCC, ANSR handles every aspect of the process. “We start by helping companies design their GCC strategy,” Ahuja explained. This includes everything from legal compliance, payroll, and recruitment to running cafeterias and creating a seamless employee experience – like a one-stop solution.

The post 1-Person GCCs Now Possible in India: ANSR CEO Lalit Ahuja appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Saraswathi Ramachandra has been appointed as the Managing Director and Country Head of Lightcast India. With over 25 years of experience in IT, consulting, and data analytics, Ramachandra brings extensive expertise in establishing and scaling Global Capability Centres (GCCs), leveraging technology, and driving organisational growth.

“One of the most exciting aspects of this role is the opportunity to scale and grow the business. Lightcast operates at the intersection of data, insights, and technology—fields that are critical in today’s fast-evolving world. By leveraging this unique position, I aim to expand our reach, deepen our impact, and drive sustainable growth,” Ramachandra said in a LinkedIn post.

Lightcast, operating at the intersection of data, insights, and technology, aims to establish a robust GCC under Ramachandra’s leadership. She plans to focus on building a world-class GCC that fosters innovation, collaboration, and strategic decision-making, while also scaling the business and driving sustainable growth.

In her career, Ramachandra has been instrumental in managing large-scale operations, building high-performing teams, and driving diversity and inclusion initiatives. She has a proven track record of delivering transformational solutions and fostering strategic growth in GCCs and IT services.

Before working at Lightcast, Ramachandra was working as a Director at Citi in Bengaluru for over five years. She also has experience of working for six years at Danske IT and Support Services in India as associate director and head of personal banking IT and analytics Centre of Excellence. 

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Global capability centres (GCCs) in India have come a long way. What began as cost-arbitrage hubs have now transformed into world-class innovation centres that highlight the country’s potential on a global stage. 

One of the key reasons behind this success is the quick recognition of India’s vast talent pool. As AI began to reshape industries, GCCs didn’t just stop at basic tasks; they started assigning complex engineering projects. This trust in Indian expertise has paid off.

Today, India’s GCC sector employs over 1.6 million professionals and drives innovation across industries. Notably, the growth isn’t slowing down anytime soon. According to Ernst & Young, by 2030, there will be over 2,400 GCCs in India, which will generate jobs for around 4.5 million people. 

The Driving Force

One of the key forces behind India’s technologically advanced and adaptive workforce is the exceptional contribution of IIT graduates. These talented individuals are leading GCCs across the country with unmatched competence and skill.

Droupadi Murmu, the President of India, highlighted the significant impact of IITs on the growth of the nation. “IITs proved to the world the capability of India in the domains of education and technology. In more than one way, the story of the IITs is the story of Independent India. The IITs have contributed immensely to India’s improved standing on the global stage today.”

Several leaders in GCCs are spearheading transformative initiatives, showcasing the exceptional talent supported by IITs. For instance, Dileep Mangsuli, senior vice president of global access to care at Siemens Healthineers, is an alumnus of IIT Madras. Similarly, Saurabh Saxena, Intuit India site leader and senior vice president of product development, hails from IIT BHU. Another notable leader, Mohit Sood, who is the regional managing principal at ZS, a global management consulting firm, is also from IIT BHU. These are just a few examples from a growing list of IIT graduates driving innovation and progress in the GCC ecosystem.

Image sourced from PIB

To explore IITs’ capability behind producing such a unique pool of talent, AIM spoke with Sharad Kumar Saraf, chairman at Technocraft Industries (India) and IIT Bombay alumnus. Saraf also serves as the chairman of the board of governors at IIT Bombay and IIT Jammu and leads the PanIIT World of Technology (PIWOT) 2025.

Saraf attributed the success of IIT alumni in leadership roles to their holistic learning environment. “What you learn in hostels – working, networking, and interacting with people from diverse backgrounds – is invaluable. It’s a big part of leadership development,” he explained. Saraf likened IITs to a modern-day Gurukul system, where professors and students interact closely, even beyond classroom settings.

From contributing to breakthroughs like CAR-T cell therapy to supporting other technical institutions, IITs continue to uplift India’s technological and societal growth. “We not only educate but also help build a better future for the nation,” he affirmed.

Talking about the transformative role of AI and its integration across various disciplines at IITs, Saraf said, “AI is a game changer, and we have realised its importance in every aspect of life, not just in business or factories.”

Institutions like IIT Bombay have embedded AI courses across departments so that all students acquire a strong foundational understanding of AI.

Pradeep Bhargava, president of IIT Startups and an IIT Kanpur alumnus, shared insights on IIT Kanpur’s significant contributions to innovation. “IIT Kanpur has consistently been one of the forefront runners in innovation. One can look at the AI centre of excellence on sustainable cities, led by IIT Kanpur, which uses AI for smart city planning, traffic management, and efficient resource distribution. By integrating data from sensors, GIS maps, and satellite feeds, the centre predicts resource needs and enhances public space design, addressing critical urban challenges,” he explained.

IIT Bombay’s interdisciplinary approach includes centres like the Technograph Centre for Applied Artificial Intelligence, which supports various departments and contributes to government and industrial projects. According to Saraf, this approach ensures that AI is embedded in all courses and departments.

Moreover, IIT Bombay has partnered with institutes like Monash University in Australia and Washington University in St Louis in the US to offer joint degree programs. Talks are also underway with a prominent Japanese university to collaborate on AI and other technologies.

Beyond GCCs

Beyond their role in GCC leadership, IITs are a driving force behind India’s thriving startup ecosystem. Through dedicated incubation programs, they encourage entrepreneurship and foster innovation.

According to the ministry of education, many successful startups have been founded by IIT alumni, including well-known names like Sachin and Binny Bansal (Flipkart), Abhay Singhal (InMobi), Ankit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal (Ola), Deepinder Goyal (Zomato), Jyoti Bansal (AppDynamics), KV Rao (Zuora), Pankaj Chaddah (Zomato), Rohit Bansal (Snapdeal), and Sanjay Sethi (ShopClues.com).

Saraf highlighted the role of IITs in encouraging entrepreneurship through incubation centres. At IIT Bombay, the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) provides mentoring, office space, and access to labs to help students and faculty turn their ideas into reality. “A couple of unicorns have already emerged from IIT incubation centres.”

IITians Taking Initiatives 

IIT Bombay has also partnered with the Maker Bhavan Foundation, where students can experiment with prototypes and explore new ideas. “This continuous effort by IITs gives students a huge advantage and positions them as key drivers of India’s startup ecosystem,” Saraf further said.

The PIWOT is another significant initiative by the IIT alumni community. The 2025 edition, to be held in Mumbai, will focus on themes like sustainability, healthcare, and agriculture.

“We aim to highlight how AI and other technologies can transform traditionally underserved sectors,” Saraf explained. The event will feature hackathons, startup pitch sessions, and discussions led by global leaders, Nobel laureates, and policymakers.

In this regard, Debashish Bhattacharyya, chairman of PanIIT Alumni India,  said, “ To ensure that the IIT students are well-equipped with the skills and insights to excel in an AI-driven world, we are looking at initiatives like PIWOT that brings together the nation’s key influencers and stakeholders like academia, industry, government, startups, alumni and enables conversation between them.”

The post These IITians are Shaping GCCs in India appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

ANSR, one of India’s leading Global Capability Centres (GCCs) enablers, released its Q3 GCC Report, which highlights India’s ascension as a global hub for GCCs. 

Over 450 Forbes Global 2000 companies operate 825+ GCCs across the country, employing more than 1.3 million professionals. The report predicts that by 2030, India could host 620+ additional GCCs, representing over 32% of Forbes Global 2000 enterprises.

The robust GCC ecosystem in India thrives on its skilled workforce, supportive government policies, innovative startups, and a strong network of service providers. This combination positions India as a premier destination for global business innovation.

Bengaluru leads as the top GCC hub, hosting over 285 companies and employing 560,000 professionals. Hyderabad follows with 110+ GCCs and 190,000 employees, attracting interest due to its infrastructure, talent availability, and business-friendly policies. 

Non-metro cities like Ahmedabad, Vizag, Trivandrum, and Coimbatore are also emerging as preferred destinations for cost-effective operations and access to untapped talent pools.

The BFSI sector dominates, representing 18% of GCCs in India, followed by Manufacturing and Retail/CPG. Newly established GCCs are prioritising advanced digital capabilities, with 90% focusing on AI/ML and data analytics. 

Other priorities include cybersecurity (40%) and cloud capabilities (50%), signaling a shift towards innovation-driven operations.

GCC leasing activity surged in Q3 2024, accounting for 44% of total office leasing in India. Bengaluru captured 62% of this demand, followed by Hyderabad at 15%. Companies like Walmart, Sanofi, NatWest Group, and Flutter Entertainment have been key players in this expansion, leveraging India’s talent pool and infrastructure.

According to a report by CBRE, the year saw a gross absorption of 79.0 million sq ft, a 16% YoY growth. GCCs accounted for 37% of the total office leasing activity in 2024, solidifying their importance in India’s commercial real estate market. BFSI firms and technology companies contributed 44% of GCC leasing, showcasing their integral role in the office sector’s growth.

GCCs are evolving from operational support roles to becoming integral in global decision-making, fostering innovation through collaboration and partnerships. They are also exploring non-metro cities in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh to benefit from lower operational costs and a favourable business environment.

Vikram Ahuja, co-founder of ANSR and CEO of Talent500, remarked, “Global Capability Centres are driving India’s growth story by leading the tech revolution across sectors through cutting-edge innovation. With a skilled workforce and emerging technologies like AI and cybersecurity, India is set to accommodate 620+ new GCCs by 2030, creating opportunities for over 1.9 million professionals.”

The post India Set to Host 620+ New GCCs by 2030: ANSR Report appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

There is little doubt behind global capability centres (GCCs) being resilient and enduring contributors to India’s economy. Known for their ability to sustain operations over the long term, GCCs have emerged as critical pillars of India’s economic landscape. These centres, set up by multinational companies, are designed to support a wide range of business functions, including technology development, innovation, analytics, and customer service. 

During the India Ideas Conclave 2024, Lalit Ahuja, co-founder and CEO of ANSR, said that GCCs have a failure rate of less than 1%.

“GCCs are forever,” Ahuja said, while highlighting their long-term value and potential to become “historical manifestations” of economic stability.

The economic footprint of GCCs in India is already significant. As of now, GCCs generate a net economic value of approximately $34 billion, which is expected to grow to nearly $75 to $80 billion by 2025. 

Beyond their revenue, their broader economic impact is even more impactful. “The economic value they add to India as a country is far higher – almost three times the direct revenue that comes from the GCCs,” explained Gaurav Gupta, Deloitte India’s GCC industry lead, in a podcast with ET Now.

GCCs, established by multinational companies, serve as hubs for innovation, technology development, and business operations, making India a preferred destination for global corporations. 

The Rise of GCCs in India

The foundation of India’s GCC journey was laid in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as multinational corporations, primarily from the United States and Europe, recognised these advantages and began setting up operations in the country. 

Located in Bengaluru, one of the oldest GCCs in India is Texas Instruments (TI) . It is the first multinational company to establish a software design and R&D centre in India in 1985. Over the past three decades, TI’s India centre has evolved into a critical R&D hub, with engineers contributing to almost every product developed globally by TI. 

In 2002, TI India expanded its focus to include the design of 3G wireless chipsets and the development of Wireless LAN (WLAN) chipsets. Later in 2005, TI India partnered with Indian manufacturer BPL to create the first cell phones. These were designed and manufactured in India, tailored to the specific needs of the Indian market, and based on TI chipsets and reference designs. 

In December 2010, TI established Kilby Labs in Bengaluru to mark its first international expansion of the research program beyond the US. The labs focus on innovation in energy efficiency, bio-electronics, and life sciences.

Other early adopters include companies like GE, American Express, and Citibank established captive centres in cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune and utilised India’s cost-effective business environment and its pool of skilled professionals. Initially, these centres focused on IT services, software development, and business process outsourcing (BPO). These laid the groundwork for what would eventually become a transformative movement in global business operations.

The seamless connection between India’s inherent strengths and the strategic goals of these multinational corporations led to the rapid growth of GCCs.

What Experts Think

Furthermore, industry experts emphasise that the success and continued growth of GCCs are deeply tied to their ability to adapt to a constantly changing global environment.

In a conversation with AIM, Yashasvi Rathore, manager of legal services at Inductus GCC mentioned, “Keeping into context the market trends and our own research based analytics, the global business landscape is highly dynamic, influenced by technological disruptions, geopolitical shifts, and evolving workforce expectations.”

Inductus GCC offers global organisations access to India’s talent pool and efficient operational ecosystem.

“India’s GCC sector has proven its resilience and adaptability, but its long-term success depends on consistent innovation, policy alignment, and talent optimisation,” Rathore added.

These centres are now seen as critical extensions of their parent organisations, capable of using India’s skilled workforce to stay competitive. However, their success also depends on external factors, including economic shifts and global dynamics, which shape their trajectory.

When AIM asked the same question to Siva Kumar Padmanabhan, MD and head of global innovation and technology centre at AstraZeneca India, he said, “I think that’s a really bold statement, right? We are very focused on building a sustainable entity or organisation that can weather the storms and be ready for the future. But there are a lot of factors. No GCC can say that everything is in their control. Because GCCs are a part of the global enterprise. Economics change. Things change.”

He further explained that the key to successful GCCs is their ability to consistently stay relevant to the global enterprise and their customers. They are built on a strong foundation designed to sustain and evolve over decades, constantly adapting and innovating. 

Staying relevant requires a commitment to self-disruption, proactive rethinking approaches, deploying newer  technology, and driving innovation. 

GCCs as a Disruptive Force

There are many GCCs in India that are redefining their roles and continuously disrupting themselves by embracing cutting-edge AI-based technologies. These centres are no longer just operational extensions of their parent companies but are becoming innovation powerhouses that drive global strategies and transform industries.

For example, Kimberly-Clark, a global leader in baby and child care brands like Huggies, Kleenex, Andrex, Cottonelle, Scott, and Kotex, has been using technology to stay ahead. In an interview with AIM, the company shared that in addition to using Microsoft Azure and OpenAI, it is also building proprietary AI solutions. 

Its global AI centre of excellence in Bengaluru is spearheading groundbreaking projects like KC-GPT, a custom version of ChatGPT enriched with the company’s proprietary data to enhance its operations and consumer engagement.

Similarly, Fluence has adopted a unique approach that sets it apart from many organisations. While most delegate limited or ancillary tasks to India, Fluence entrusts its Indian teams with critical responsibilities.

Dhanya Rajeswaran, country managing director of Fluence India, revealed, “For the first time in two years, we now have the global product leader for our next-gen product sitting out of India and designing that product.” 

Ultimately, the success of GCCs in India lies in their ability to adapt, innovate, and anticipate future challenges. By making the best use of advanced technologies and nurturing a forward-thinking mindset, these centres are not just contributing to their parent organisations but are also shaping the future of global business.

The post ‘GCCs Maintain a Mortality Rate Under 1%’ appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Global capability centres (GCCs) in India are making waves for their salaries, often trumping traditional IT jobs by a significant margin. According to AIM Research, GCCs pay 20-25% more on average than non-GCC roles. 

However, there’s a noticeable salary gap between tier-1 cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad and tier-2 and tier-3 cities such as Kochi or Coimbatore.

“Innovation and engineering activities are predominantly concentrated in tier-1 cities due to a limited talent pool in tier-2 regions. However, GCCs are now exploring the latter as potential hubs for operations and technology, driven by cost savings of up to 30% on talent and real estate together,” said Ankur Goel, founder of gatewAI, who has been in the space of talent management for over two decades. 

According to AIM Research, salaries are significantly higher in tier-1 cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. Mumbai leads at ₹20 lakhs per annum (LPA). Bangalore comes close with ₹19.5 LPA, while Hyderabad and Delhi NCR also offer competitive salaries of ₹18 LPA and ₹18.5 LPA, respectively. 

In contrast, tier-2 cities like Jaipur, Coimbatore, and Indore report much lower median salaries, with figures like ₹10.2 LPA, ₹10.7 LPA, and ₹12.3 LPA. 

AIM Research also notes that senior-level professionals across most GenAI roles in tier-1 cities, such as generative AI engineers (₹40.5 LPA), Gen-AI research scientists (₹40.5 LPA), and synthetic data engineers (₹40.2 LPA), command some of the highest salaries in GCCs. 

What’s driving this disparity? And yet, why does it look like a fair bargain?

Cost of Living and Competition

A significant reason for the disparity is the cost of living. As Bhargab Dutta, chief digital officer at Century Plyboards, explains, “The cost of living is accounted for in tier-2 & 3 cities, which has a direct impact on the salary offerings.” 

Cities like Bengaluru demand higher pay due to expensive housing, food, and transportation, whereas smaller cities allow companies to offer compensation in accordance with the local living expenses.

Additionally, competition for talent plays a role. Bengaluru and Hyderabad, as tech hubs, have plenty of companies eyeing the same pool of skilled professionals, driving salaries up. Meanwhile, Kochi and Coimbatore, with fewer competing organisations, offer lower pay.

Retention and Work-Life Balance

Smaller cities have other advantages. Dutta highlights that retention rates are often better in tier-2 & 3 cities. “The sense of community connection and proximity to family environments make employees less likely to switch jobs,” he notes.

Arun Divakaran, client partner at IBM Consulting, echoes this sentiment: “Many professionals who initially moved to tier-1 cities are now looking to return to their hometowns for better work-life balance. GCCs in smaller cities can attract such talent by offering challenging roles without the downsides of the metro life.”

This perspective resonates with professionals as well. A Reddit user shared, “Relatively less crowded, less traffic, less pollution… Most amenities are still there, and you can afford better housing. Life feels easier [in smaller cities] compared to metros.”

Talking about the influx of nano GCCs in tier-2 & 3 cities, Suchita Vishnoi, cofounder and CMO at gatewAI, said, “With a wealth of skilled professionals graduating from regional universities, nano GCCs can tap into available talent, providing opportunities closer to home and reducing brain drain to metropolitan areas.” 

She further explained that nano GCCs provide their employees exposure through collaboration across teams and clients globally, ensuring their careers are future-ready without needing to relocate.

Generational shifts also play a part here. With more Gen Z and soon Gen Alpha professionals entering the workforce, priorities are changing. 

“Work-life balance is crucial for these generations,” said Dutta. Thanks to better infrastructure and services, tier-2/3 cities increasingly offer the balance that younger professionals seek.

Innovation and Future Trends

GCCs are no longer just back offices. They are driving innovation. Sunny Parwani, founder at Kaam.work, points out that these roles tackle problems at the global scale. “A developer in Pune is creating solutions used by millions worldwide, and a data scientist in Bangalore is shaping billion-dollar decisions.”

However, there are others who hold a different opinion on this. Ankit Mittal, release train manager at Natwest, argues that the higher salaries in GCCs may be more about cost advantages than genuinely “higher value” work.

The Way Forward

The expansion of GCCs into smaller cities is a growing trend. Karthik Padmanabhan of Zinnov highlights that GCC talent has grown by 24% since FY 2019, with export revenues hitting $64.6 billion in FY24. As more companies establish nano GCCs in tier-2 cities, salaries might gradually rise due to increased competition for skilled talent.

A Reddit user summarised the opportunity in cities like Kochi well: “Salary levels aren’t as high as Bangalore, but with remote work becoming more common, corrections may happen soon.”

Ultimately, while tier-2 & 3 cities may offer lower salaries today, the trade-off includes better living conditions, work-life balance, and increasing opportunities for skilled professionals. For many, that’s a compelling deal.

The post Why GCCs Pay Poorly in Tier-2 & 3 Cities appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

India introduced its first-ever GCC policy at the 2024 Bengaluru Tech Summit with an aim to bring in 1,000 GCCs, generate 3.5 lakh new jobs, and hit $50 billion in economic output by 2029. Karnataka alone already hosts more than 875 GCCs – around 30% of India’s total. The state employs 6 lakh people and contributes $22.2 billion annually.

According to an AIM Research report, third-party companies or GCC enablers play a crucial role in the successful establishment and operation of GCCs. Their expertise simplify the complex process of setting up a GCC, from selecting the right location to navigating regulatory frameworks, ensuring infrastructure readiness, and recruiting talent. 

These firms provide specialised knowledge and local insights, which help multinational corporations minimise risks, reduce setup time, and lower operational costs.

Moreover, third-party facilitators bring valuable industry experience and networks, thereby facilitating a smoother integration of the GCC into the global operations of the parent company. By using their expertise, companies can focus on their core business while ensuring their GCC runs efficiently.

According to AIM Research, top PeMa (penetration and maturity) Quadrant GCC service providers in India include ANSR, EY, HCL, Deloitte and KPMG.

“As of today, GCCs are close to around $34 billion in terms of net economic value…We expect that they have the potential to grow to almost $75 to $80 billion by 2025. More importantly, the economic value that they add to India as a country is far higher – almost three times the direct revenue that comes from the GCCs,” Gaurav Gupta, GCC industry lead of Deloitte India, said in a podcast with ET Now.

Highlighting some policy-related hurdles, he further said, “One is from a policy perspective. While we have had some incentives that were given to the GCC sector almost 10 years ago, over a period of time…they’ve gone away. To try and attract more GCCs to India, we need to look at what other incentives can be provided.”

Talent remains a big focus

“India has been a great talent story, but the talent needs of GCCs are evolving. We need to see what new skill sets are required and ensure we bridge the demand-supply gap there,” Gupta said.

GCC enablers have stepped in to fill these gaps. Deloitte India helps GCCs become innovation centres by offering consulting on digital transformation, nurturing start-up collaborations, and focusing on futuristic tech. 

According to Deloitte, focusing on innovation and advanced technology is becoming a necessity for every business. 

Meanwhile, when it comes to start-ups, accessing global markets via GCCs using their domain expertise and brand reputation, and accessing the physical and virtual infrastructure of GCCs are among the many perks of such partnerships.

Management consulting firm Zinnov, established in 2002, has been recognised for helping Fortune 500 companies with market entry, product engineering, and scaling operations.

Nilesh Thakker, president of Zinnov, and Karthik Padmanabhan, managing partner of GCCs in Zinnov, stressed, “True ownership in tech means owning the whole process – from strategy to design, building, and updating. It’s a call for GCCs to step up, create more value, and lead in global innovation.”

The firm’s expertise spans automation, AI, and technology consulting. It offers services such as GCC setup and roadmap design, talent strategy, digital transformation, operational optimisation, location analysis, and governance. 

Zinnov also provides specialised solutions like the GCC Blueprint Model for launching and expanding global centres, its Talent 360 Platform for workforce planning, and ongoing Zinnov Zones reports for comprehensive service provider evaluations.

EY, on the other hand, was recognised as the leader for GCC/GIC Setup Capabilities in India in Everest Group’s PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024.

“With a team of 10,000 practitioners, including former GCC CXOs, EY is supporting international organisations set up and evolve their GCCs/GICs by transforming them into innovation-driven centres of strategic value,” Kunal Ghatak, global business services partner at EY India, said.

Meanwhile, ANSR, a global leader in establishing and operating GCCs for enterprises, stated, “ANSR is redefining India’s role on the global stage. By enabling over 135 GCCs and driving $2 billion in investments, ANSR is at the forefront of fostering innovation, nurturing talent, and catalysing growth for global enterprises.”

Digital services company and GCC tech enabler GlobalLogic has also noticed a major shift. “A lot of companies in the last couple of years have started empowering the GCCs,” Piyush Jha managing director of GlobalLogic India and APAC said in an interview with AIM.

“Since we have specialised ourselves in the product development space for the last 22-23 years, it becomes very natural for us to start getting into synergistic motions with these GCCs.”

Emerging Nano GCC Space

Suchita Vishnoi, co-founder and CMO at gatewAI, explained to AIM that starting in 2024, the company – a GCC enabler – decided to “change the way GCCs are coming to India. She added that gatewAI shifted the focus from old-school IT outsourcing to an “AI era” approach. 

Instead of competing solely on cost, gatewAI aims to offer “GCC as a service with AI-enabled service offerings” and zeroes in on “nano GCCs”, typically teams with five to 50 employees. 

“We say we are born in the AI era. We are not born in the IT outsourcing era…which makes us very nimble, very agile, very new age in the way we are adaptive to the requirements that any GCC brings,” Vishnoi further said.

According to her, NASSCOM has predicted the number of GCCs to reach 2,200 by 2030.

“That’s a huge opportunity for us…We have a strong five-year window to capitalise and help a lot of the nano GCCs, the small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that want to set up innovation hubs here in India.”

In short, it’s a new age for GCCs in India. Companies want more than just cheap labour; they’re looking for a place to build products, develop cutting-edge tech, and tap into world-class talent.

“Any company that’s coming to India for the first time will say, ‘I need groundwork research done so that I know that the foundation I’m setting is for success’,” Vishnoi concluded.For policymakers, enablers, and GCCs themselves, the future is about collaboration, creative solutions, and continuous innovation. After all, the path to hitting that ambitious $50 billion mark, and beyond, will rely on how quickly they can adapt to changing tech trends and talent needs, one GCC at a time.

The post GCC Enablers Pave the Way for India’s $50 Billion Economic Output Goal appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

With the rise in India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs), there is a visible trend of women leading innovation, and the list is quite extensive. According to a joint research published by Pure Storage and Zinnov, GCCs in India are leading the charge for a diverse workforce, with women accounting for 28% of their workforce.

Madhurima Khandelwal, vice president at American Express, brings her background in Economics to the table to lead a strong team of 1,700 skilled professionals. She is no stranger to innovation; her stint as head of AI Labs saw her team boost the company’s machine learning and AI capabilities.

Sirisha Voruganti, on the other hand, has a management degree from Harvard and is making headway at Lloyds Technology Centre India. As the CEO and managing director of the tech and data company, she pulled off an impressive feat by growing the team to over 1,000 engineers in just six months. 

In a LinkedIn post, Voruganti acknowledged that women are indeed breaking the glass ceiling and forging a new era of leadership.

In another LinkedIn post, Kishore Chandran, founder and president at Dr Kalam Foundation, said, “The story of India’s GCCs is being written by nearly two dozen women leaders who are taking on pivotal roles beyond traditional HR and marketing domains. These women are leading core engineering, finance, innovation, analytics, and other areas.”

Meanwhile, Suchita Vishnoi, co-founder and CMO at gatewAI, spoke about how women leaders lead by example, blend heart and mind, and showcase strong team-building skills.

“I see a lot of women who bring in leadership skills when it comes to putting a team together and leading by example…That’s a very big quality. I am a woman leader myself, and I think I bring that.”

She pointed out that the expertise, experience, and ability to lead diverse, large-scale teams of women make them ideal for such roles. “They are skilled, they are experienced, they have the right expertise, and they bring in the best leadership qualities that anyone needs to bring in to lead a large team of the scale.”

According to her, women leaders often rise above differences in origin to represent their organisations effectively.

Recently, AIM spoke to Dhanya Rajeswaran, who leads Fluence’s India operations as the country managing director. With her management degree, she’s been instrumental in building the GCC in India from scratch, turning it into a key innovation hub for Fluence, a global leader in energy storage and renewable tech.

Dhanya highlighted the collaborative nature of GCC leadership, which moves away from the traditional hierarchy. “The role of a GCC leader is, in my view, a very strong bridge builder. You need a vision, a strategic mindset, and strong execution, but also the ability to connect across potential silos in the organisation.”

This leadership style thrives on connections over authority. “Not everybody reports to you or has to listen to you, but you still need to work with them to connect the dots meaningfully, both globally and locally,” she added. 

For Dhanya, creating an innovation culture means fostering an environment where “everybody feels nurtured, free, and enabled”.

When asked if GCCs offer a more unbiased environment for women, she elaborated on their global focus. “Is it an unbiased environment, or is it an environment which is more globally connected? There are no traditional mindsets about how things should look, but rather a focus on finding the best person for the job.”

On why more women seem to lead in GCCs, Dhanya noted, “I don’t think women are chosen intentionally. But the structure is fluid and open, which might naturally lead to more women being in these roles.” This flexible and inclusive approach challenges traditional norms and enables innovation to thrive.

Massive Expansion

Under her leadership, Fluence was established in India in 2022 and has rapidly scaled to 400 employees in just over a year.

She pointed out that for India, especially as a Global Innovation Centre (GIC), there are three key aspects of the company strategy. “India is an accelerator, value generator and  horizontal integrator.”

The GIC contributes not only to the speed of product development but also enhances the company’s top and bottom lines globally.

Fluence goes beyond just providing battery energy storage systems, often referred to as “the boxes”. “We don’t just do the battery energy storage, which means it’s the boxes, but on top of the boxes, we have our own software, which is our operating system,” Rajeswaran explained.

The core of Fluence’s innovation lies in its in-house software solutions in India, which involves two to three different levels.

First is the Fluence Operating System, a control system that ensures the smooth operation of storage units. Next is an asset management tool called Nispera. Finally comes Mosaic, a powerful AI-driven bidding application that uses AI to make critical decisions.

 “At any given time, there are nearly 5,000 decisions you need to make to decide if now is the moment to bid in the market and at what price,” she explained. The AI simplifies this process, which helps eliminate guesswork and helps customers act at the right moment.

These tools are not standalone products. They integrate with Fluence’s storage systems. For example, Mosaic can automatically trigger energy discharge when market prices are favourable, combining hardware, software, and AI for a complete energy storage solution.

India Takes Centre Stage 

India’s contributions to global product development at Fluence have reached a new milestone. “For the first time in two years, we now have the global product leader for our next-gen product sitting out of India and designing that product,” Rajeswaran added.

Unlike many organisations that delegate smaller portions of work to India, Fluence takes a different approach. “Nearly 75% of our global teams have a strong presence in India,” Rajeswaran explained. 

Rajeswaran also added that the centre has grown more than eightfold in just two years. “We started with just a few of us setting up the entity.”

Why Bengaluru

Rajeswaran pointed out that a unique thing about Bengaluru is that it is so cosmopolitan. “People here have worked in so many different parts of the world, and eventually, they settle here.”

Bengaluru offers Fluence, whose work is highly specialised, an unparalleled advantage. “If you need someone familiar with Australia’s grid codes, chances are you will find them in Bengaluru more than anywhere else.”

While other cities like Chennai or Hyderabad also have talent pools, Bengaluru’s ability to provide niche global expertise sets it apart.

As a company, Fluence takes a quality-over-quantity approach to its workforce. “Globally, we are a $2.7 billion revenue company with a headcount of only 1,700,” Rajeswaran further said. This lean but highly skilled team ensures that every hire brings deep expertise in engineering, energy, and technology.

The post Women Innovators Break the Glass Ceiling in GCCs appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Of late, Indian IT companies have been forging partnerships with engineering colleges and universities to train students in practical, job-ready skills. The sole purpose behind such collaborations is to address the growing demand for AI-skilled workforce.

Infosys Foundation has invested ₹38 crore in a partnership with the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) in New Delhi to upskill educators and provide internships and mentorship for students.

“By working with INAE, we hope to empower educators with the right set of teaching skills and provide students with real-world learning experiences through internships and meaningful guidance from mentors that will collectively contribute towards boosting the employability of the engineering workforce in India,” said Sumit Virmani, trustee of Infosys Foundation.

Similar to Tata Technologies, it has established innovation centres at private universities, offering hands-on training to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and industry needs. 

Similarly, Mumbai-based HSNC University has collaborated with TCS iON to design certification programs, internships, and placements, ensuring students are prepared for real-world challenges. At the same time, Sardar Patel Institute of Technology in Mumbai has partnered with IBM and Wipro for advanced training. 

Karnataka government’s initiative to pair 100 engineering colleges with corporates by 2025 aims to directly increase employment prospects.

Such efforts underscore the IT sector and the government’s commitment to finding long-term solutions to prepare a pipeline of skilled professionals who will meet the industry’s future demands.

GCC Poach Talent for Immediate Gains

While IT firms focus on nurturing future talent through long-term investments in college partnerships, GCCs are poaching experienced professionals and tapping into niche skill sets directly.

An example of this shift is Zeiss, a German optical technology firm that launched its first GCC in Bengaluru in November 2024. The centre focuses on cloud computing, cybersecurity, and software development and plans to double its Indian workforce to 5,000 within three years. 

“This centre will accelerate the digital transformation of our growing global operations,” said Dhaval Radia, chief financial officer, ZEISS India.

GCCs are not just targeting traditional engineering graduates but are broadening their hiring strategies to include experts with advanced degrees. 

In an interview with AIM, Dhanya Rajeswaran, global VP and managing director at Fluence India, highlighted this trend: “Absolutely, we are hiring from IIT and NIT, but we are also looking for people with PhDs, MTechs, and specialisations in our kind of work.” 

Reddit users have also highlighted this GCC strategy. One commented, “Our GCC, for example, is taking business away from TCS/HCL and replacing them or taking their staff and making them ours.” 

Another observed Google’s approach, noting the establishment of the Google Operations Center (GOC) between 2017 and 2019. Since then, professionals from companies like Cognizant and Accenture have transitioned to roles at Google’s GCC, showcasing the appeal of GCC roles.

GCCs have seen exponential growth by leveraging career advancement opportunities and competitive hiring practices. From 5,000 global leaders in Indian GCCs in 2022, projections suggest this figure will surpass 30,000 by 2030, growing at a compound annual rate of 25.1%. 

This evolution signals a pivotal shift in India’s tech ecosystem as GCCs cement their dominance in the recruitment arena.

“GCCs are connecting the dots,” said Rishi Kapoor, vice president and APAC lead – talent acquisition & staffing, Material. “The key will be to bridge the gap between the demand for skilled professionals in GCCs and the evolving expectations of Gen Z. Reshaping the employee value proposition (EVP) and aligning talent with core values and culture will be essential.”

Competitive Advantage 

GCCs attract top talent from Indian IT companies by offering competitive compensation and international exposure. According to a recent TeamLease Digital report, GCCs pay 12-20% higher salaries than IT services for comparable tech roles driven by investments in AI, machine learning, and cybersecurity.

GCCs offer significantly higher salaries, with compensation for software developers ranging from ₹9.7 lakh to ₹43 lakh annually, compared to ₹5.7 lakh to ₹17.9 lakh in IT services for similar roles. 

Entry-level salaries at GCCs are also up to 30% higher than the average across sectors. They emphasise innovation, particularly in AI, cloud computing, and cybersecurity, positioning themselves as leaders in tech transformation. 

In contrast, Indian IT companies focus on maintaining existing projects while lagging in generative AI and R&D investment due to high costs. 

As of now, there is a strategic tug-of-war between Indian IT firms focusing on long-term talent development and GCCs prioritising short-term skill acquisition to sustain their rapid growth.

The post Indian IT Grooms Grads While GCCs Grab Pros appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Bengaluru currently has the highest concentration of Global Capability Centres (GCCs), housing over 875 GCC units and serving as a vital hub for global business operations. As the city continues to be the hub for new GCCs, the Karnataka government is aiming to replicate the efficiency and success of Bengaluru in other parts of the state.

GCCs employ over 2.2 million people in India, with major hubs in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Mumbai, as revealed by AIM Research. Bengaluru holds the largest share of 34%, which highlights its position as India’s top hub for GCCs. This is supported by the city’s strong IT industry connection, skilled workforce, and good infrastructure.

To hold a competitive edge, cities across different states have been vying to attract GCCs. Among them, Hyderabad has emerged as one of the prominent contenders. 

In November, the Karnataka government introduced its GCC policy 2024, with plans to create 3.5 lakh new jobs by 2029. The policy is designed to attract 500 new GCCs to the state, bringing the total to 1,000 and generating an economic output of $50 billion. With this, the state government is targeting 330 Forbes 2,000 companies to establish their GCCs in the state by 2030.

This month, the Telangana government signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the US Chamber of Commerce’s US-India Business Council (USIBC), aiming to focus on collaboration in IT, AI, electronics and GCCs.

Commenting on the competition among various states aiming to attract GCCs to their cities, Mohandas Pai, founder of Aarin Capital and former CFO of Infosys, told AIM while all states will try to attract companies, the incentive of concession on land and power alone is not enough to lure GCCs away from Bengaluru. 

The real differentiator will always be youth capital. “All these concessions make no difference,” Pai said.

Talent is the Key and Will Always Be

Pai highlighted that companies prefer employees who are ready to join immediately, as setting up GCCs shouldn’t require much time. “Does the state have a large pool of good engineers where they can come and hire 1,000-2,000 [employees] and start immediately?” 

This, along with labour policies, affects the decisions of MNCs when setting up GCCs. “Does the state have good labour policies where inspectors will not harass them? Do they have good infrastructure and reasonable quality of life for all the people they hire?” wondered Pai. He pointed out that the state should also have a good schooling policy for the children of the senior employees they hire.

This also aligns with the Karnataka government’s goal of making other districts as attractive as Bengaluru for companies to set up offices. Cities and areas like Mangaluru, Mysuru, the Hubballi-Dharwad-Belagavi cluster, Kalaburagi, Shivamogga, and Tumakuru are all part of this initiative.

Moreover, many MNCs are taking the help of the bigger GCCs already established in Bengaluru to expand their presence in smaller towns. These are known as Nano GCCs. These districts provide smaller and specialised services for larger GCCs, paving the way for Bengaluru to attract more GCCs in the upcoming years.

Not So Much Hyderabad

Pai, who earlier said Bengaluru is closer to San Francisco than Delhi, believes the only places where favourable government policies and strong infrastructure will be abundant would be Bengaluru, Pune, and possibly Gurgaon. Hyderabad, on the other hand, would not focus on sophisticated work for setting up GCCs, which would operate on providing resources.

Following the policy announcement earlier this month, Duddilla Sridhar Babu, Telangana’s IT minister, called the state a “global leader in innovation” and said, “This MoU is a major milestone in deepening our partnership with the US.” 

He added that the Telangana government’s participation in the industry roundtable on AI and GCCs further solidifies Telangana and Hyderabad’s position as a global technology hub. Karnataka, however, has the first-mover advantage. Even though Hyderabad has seen a surge of office expansions over the last few years to attract GCCs, there is still a long road ahead.

GCCs in India are focusing on talent retention, niche resource partnerships, expansion to more centres in different cities, and tier-II city interests. This is ideal for cities around Bengaluru, if not in Bengaluru itself. 

This sentiment was also reflected by Saurabh Saxena, regional vice president at OpenText India, in an exclusive interaction with AIM. “If you’ve got 5,000-6,000 engineers working purely on product development, engineering and professional services, then there’s a strong innovation hub.”

The team even joked about Bengaluru’s weather being an incentive behind the expansion plans.

Indian IT companies, most of which have headquarters in Bengaluru, also help GCCs set foot in the city by providing workforce, infrastructure, and, in certain cases, even real estate for the offices. The talent pool within the city also allows GCCs to view it differently than other cities. 

Furthermore, even if an MNC wants to move beyond Bengaluru because of the higher rent and other costs, cities like Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, or Pune are still not favourable for them. This is because there is not enough difference in rent for them to move away from the biggest IT hub in the country.

The post Bengaluru Will Remain the GCC Hub of India in the Upcoming Years appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Indian IT companies are now teaming up with global capability centres (GCCs) as multinational corporations set up offices in India. What once seemed like a rivalry between these two sectors has transformed into a perfectly collaborative journey.

IT firms have partnered with GCCs to aid in their establishment and operations within the country. In turn, the GCCs allow these MNCs to leverage the country’s vast pool of tech talent directly instead of relying on service companies for all the work.

Looks Too Good to be True

India’s GCC sector, which employs over 1.6 million professionals, continues to thrive. According to projections, by 2030, the country is likely to have over 2,400 GCCs, creating over 4.5 million jobs and boosting the market size from $45 billion to $110 billion. 

However, the talent pool might not be enough for both industries in the coming years. Delivering 4.5 million jobs over the next five years just for GCCs does not seem enough, as there would be nothing left for Indian IT.

Despite this, Mohandas Pai, former CFO of Infosys, believes that both Indian IT and GCCs will thrive because of the large pool of talent that will be ready in the coming years. “Some of them will move from IT companies to GCCs because the latter pay better. But on the downside, the work at many of these GCCs would not be as exciting and diverse as the IT companies,” Pai told AIM. 

Pai predicts that this would result in an almost even distribution of the workforce in both industries. “There is enough stock of people in this country,” he said, explaining that India has around six million people “in stock”, with around 600,000 being added every year. This includes freshers and experienced people looking for roles in IT and GCCs.

He added that there is going to be a lot of poaching as well. But it might not be more than maybe 1,000 people in a month. “GCCs are becoming more and more specialised because the parent company is focusing on critical and concrete things.” He added that there has always been competition between MNCs and Indian IT companies for the last 25 years, and this competition is also going to continue.

Collaboration with One, Competition with Others

Pai continued that Indian ITs are always going to collaborate with certain GCCs because most of them work with the parent company that has a GCC in India. 

When it comes to the parent company of the GCC, they would also want to own a part of the technology instead of completely outsourcing everything to IT. Pai said that is why they set up GCCs in India instead of working in the home country, as it helps reduce the expenditure while making a critical technology.

This is also why GCCs in India are heavily focused on building AI capabilities and driving AI transformation within their organisations. About 70% of India’s GCCs are reportedly adopting generative AI. The most sought-after tech roles in GCCs include software engineers, developers, data specialists, AI and machine learning experts, cloud computing professionals, and cybersecurity specialists.

Now, since Indian IT is providing them with such skills and there’s a likelihood of GCCs poaching them, there might be a tough relationship between GCCs that work with a specific IT client and the others that don’t.

As GCCs establish their presence in India, there’s a growing opportunity for the young talent in the country to leverage their skills in generative AI for a lucrative career with them. 

Mrinal Rai, assistant director and principal analyst at ISG, told AIM that since both service providers and GCCs are competing for the same talent pool, and given that the GCCs offer significantly higher packages and better designations to freshers, it gets challenging for service providers.

Indian IT is Happy for Now

Speaking about the surge of GCCs, Nachiket Deshpande, COO at LTIMindtree, told AIM that he has always maintained that GCCs and Indian IT are going to co-exist. “There is a role for them, and there is a role for us,” he said, adding that financial services are one of the largest verticals for LTIMindtree, and GCC is not new for financial services.

Deshpande said that LTIMindtree’s partners have had a fairly large GCC base over the past 25 years, and the company continues to work collaboratively with them. He added that the model is not new to the firm. “I think a lot of people in other industries are experimenting with it for the first time and that’s where a lot of flow has started coming in,” he added.

LTIMindtree helps the GCCs in three ways: setting up their offices, providing services like talent acquisition, or providing them with skillsets as partners. Deshpande added that L&T has the unique advantage of offering them real estate and technology. 

All of this rings similar to what other IT giants have said in their latest earnings calls.

“Half of the new GCCs established in the past one to two years have relied on external IT firms for setup support,” Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said. 

Wipro CEO Srini Pallia said, “We have trained 230,000 employees in generative AI and have 44,000 advanced AI experts. This allows us to partner with GCCs in executing projects, creating a win-win for both.”

Meanwhile, HCLTech CEO C Vijayakumar said, “Certain types of work are better suited for outsourcing, and others are more aligned with in-house operations.” He also dismissed concerns about GCCs eating into the market share of IT firms, explaining that the $1 trillion addressable market for global system integrators ensures ample growth opportunities. 

Accenture’s investment in ANSR, which helps companies establish GCCs in India, also hints at a growing collaboration. Vikram Ahuja, the co-founder of ANSR, has previously said that it is a misconception that Indian IT and GCCs are competing with each other. 

The firm partners with GCCs to oversee over 30,000 staff from IT services. He added that around 85% of their GCC customers also work with IT services companies in some regard. It seems like 2025 might be the year we see more poaching and competition amongst Indian IT and the GCCs of the clients of their rivals.

The post Indian IT Can’t Get Rid of GCCs appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Nano Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India are marking a transformative shift in the outsourcing and offshoring landscape, especially in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. These GCCs are more adaptable and innovation-driven and typically focus on niche services, specialised tasks, or innovation-driven projects.

Last year, Metso Outotec, a global leader in sustainable technology and services for the mining, aggregates, recycling, and process industries, inaugurated a new engineering centre in Vadodara, Gujarat, India. The company also has a presence in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, and Pune.

According to Metso Outotec, the new facility will soon employ more than 250 specialists and cover several functions and capabilities, including engineering for various products, modernisations and upgrades, quotation support, logistics, procurement, and training and learning professionals.

This is just one example among many.

The Zinnov-Nasscom India GCC Landscape report highlighted that tier 2 and tier 3 cities now house about 7% of total GCC units in FY2024, up from 5% in FY2019.

These emerging centres, termed Nano GCCs, are projected to grow by 15-20% by 2025, with a surge of 25-30% anticipated in subsequent years.

According to AIM Research, while Bengaluru and Hyderabad lead the way, cities like Chandigarh and Indore, each accounting for 4% of total GCCs, are signalling a strategic shift in GCC location preferences.

The Reason Behind Such a Move

There is no doubt that these GCCs in India have evolved into the AI innovation counterparts of their parent companies and are now expanding beyond major metropolitan areas to tap into the abundant talent pools available in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.

Tier 2 cities in India are home to a growing number of educational institutions that produce a steady stream of graduates in engineering, IT, and business disciplines.

Talking about the proliferation of GCCs in tier 2 and 3 cities during an interview with AIM, Piyush Jha, MD India and APAC of GlobalLogic, said, “Post-COVID, a lot of people have gone back to their [hometowns] and want to stay there. We don’t want to disrupt that ecosystem. When we go into these smaller cities and work with the talent there, the engagement levels are higher, and attrition levels are lower.”

Supporting this strategic shift, governments at both the central and state levels are increasingly recognising the potential of tier 2 cities as growth engines.

For example, according to the Karnataka GCC policy, while Bengaluru will continue to be the hub for new GCCs, the Karnataka government is committed to promoting equitable growth across the state through its ‘Beyond Bengaluru’ initiative. 

The goal is to replicate Bengaluru’s efficiency and success in other parts of the state, catalysing the growth of similar ecosystems in cities beyond the capital. The policy will focus on incentivising GCCs to set up operations in these cities. It also aims to showcase the offerings and capabilities of these cities, including Mangaluru, Mysuru, the Hubballi-Dharwad-Belagavi cluster, Kalaburagi, Tumakuru, and Shivamogga.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) also supports this GCC expansion throughout India. It is developing a comprehensive policy framework to offer fresh incentives for GCCs. These incentives aim to complement existing state-level policies and encourage the establishment of smaller GCCs in areas focused on niche sectors like healthcare and finance.

Meanwhile, the Indian government, under the UDAN scheme, is focusing on better air connectivity to tier-2 and tier-3 cities and providing necessary incentives. Tier-2 cities have recently seen a high growth in coworking spaces. For instance, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, and Indore have more than four flex operators, while Bhubaneshwar, Visakhapatnam, Thiruvananthapuram, and Coimbatore have more than one flex operator each.

What can Nano GCCs Achieve?

Speaking about how Nano GCCs are fueling mega innovations, Suchita Vishnoi, co-founder and CMO at gatewAI, said on LinkedIn, “While traditional GCCs often operate on a massive scale, with thousands of employees handling a wide array of tasks, nano GCCs offer a different approach. They are smaller, more agile versions, typically focusing on niche services, specialised tasks, or innovation-driven projects.”

“What distinguishes nano GCCs is their specialised focus. They excel in areas like AI, analytics, cybersecurity, and hi-tech, leveraging their agility to swiftly adapt to emerging trends and technologies,” she further said.

In another post, Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, partner at Catalincs, mentioned in a LinkedIn post, “While companies in the Fortune 500 and Global 2000 category continue to make a beeline for India, a silent revolution is happening concurrently in the GCC space.”

“Specialist companies as well as new-age venture capital and PE-backed companies are setting up their GCCs in large numbers, tapping into the diverse talent across India in newer areas such as analytics and AI, next-gen hardware, in-memory and edge computing, IoT, cyber security, space technology, genomics technology and synthetic biology, among others,” he added.

GlobalLogic Leads the Charge

In this mix, GlobalLogic, a leader in digital engineering, exemplifies this trend by facilitating GCC expansion into tier 2 and tier 3 cities by helping them use AI.

Over the years, this Hitachi group company has reported significant growth in its India business, driven by the rising number of GCCs in the country. The company is expanding its operations to smaller cities to tap into local talent and reduce the need for migration to larger hubs.

Currently operating in 10 cities across India, GlobalLogic has opened new centres in Mahabubnagar, near Hyderabad and Ahmedabad and is expanding its presence in Nagpur. 

GlobalLogic is increasingly helping GCCs to move beyond their traditional roles as execution arms of global corporations. “A few years ago, they were execution arms for global corporates. Today, a lot of product development is happening in these GCCs,” Jha explained.

To accelerate AI adoption by GCCs, the company recently launched Velocity AI, a generative AI platform designed to enhance product development efficiency and reduce costs. “We hope to share 25-30% of development time using AI tools and make life simpler for our customers, including all GCCs,” Jha further said.

He stressed that the company maintains a synergistic relationship with GCCs, helping them grow as an innovation hub in India.

GlobalLogic’s Velocity AI seamlessly integrates with major cloud providers such as Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure and supports local LLMs. This platform automates repetitive tasks, allowing developers to focus on complex and creative aspects of product development. 

“When we launched it, it was already integrated with these three major providers. The beauty of this workbench, compared to others on the market, is that you can choose the tools you want to work with,” Jha added.

Addressing the skill gap in India, Jha said, “We’re trying to solve the…issue, which is why we’re calling it a hub…We are tying all these spokes to a hub centre. So, if you go to a city 200 kilometres from Bengaluru, Bengaluru will be a hub that will reinforce training and technology.”

The post Beyond Bengaluru, Nano GCCs Grow in Tier 2 & Tier 3 Cities appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Kimberly-Clark, a pioneer and global leader of mom-trusted baby and child care brands – the likes of Huggies, Kleenex, Andrex, Cottonelle, Scott, Kotex and others – seems to hold a special place for Bengaluru, compared to other cities in India as well as the rest of the world, where its global digital and technology centre is currently located.  

“Bengaluru provides access to a highly skilled talent pool and serves as a hub of technological innovation within India,” recalled Sreekanth Jayabalan, VP and CIO of digital transformation office and enterprise markets at Kimberly-Clark, during an interview with AIM. 

According to him, the decision to establish the GCC in Bengaluru was largely driven by the goal of fostering pioneering innovation within Kimberly-Clark. Interestingly, the company revealed that the team has a track record of developing innovative things to enhance its global speed-to-market initiatives.

“The team has built an AI-enabled solution called Maestro, which has saved us almost $20 million on an annual basis, optimising how we manage our stocks and how we manage our logistics,” Jayabalan added. “It could be in the marketing, digital marketing space, etc.”

Citing a recently concluded hackathon, an excited Jayabalan said it was fascinating to see various AI-driven solutions and demos from the team – including an AI-generated commercial well under three minutes. “This happens only in Bengaluru.”          

Bengaluru x Huggies 

Currently, Kimberly-Clark’s global digital technology centre in Bengaluru carries out engineering solution design, deployment, and support.

“We have our own architects,” Jayabalan boasted, adding that a lot of technology solutions are being architected and engineered by our own associates. “Many of whom sit in the centre.”

Further, he clarified that among much of the AI-based usage and innovation that occurs in Kimberly-Clark’s markets worldwide, the core technologies are being developed in Bengaluru both in-house as well as in close collaboration with Microsoft Azure, OpenAI, and others, for enhancing their marketing and e-commerce strategies. 

For example, when consumers search for diapers on platforms like Flipkart or Amazon – each with its own algorithm – the team employs generative AI to optimise product display pages. This AI tailors language and keywords to align with the specific platform’s user search behaviour, something that would be difficult to manage manually at scale. 

Additionally, the Bengaluru team has also developed proprietary route optimisation algorithms in-house, which are used to assist the field workforce, merchandisers, and salesmen in deciding which outlets they need to cover on a daily basis. 

“There’s a next best action (NBA) algorithm that’s built out of here (Bengaluru) but deployed all over the world,” Jayabalan further said. 

NBA explained: NBA algorithm actively guides field representatives through each step, recommending the following product to sell or the next item to inspect in the store. By considering tasks such as verifying inventory, educating customers about available offers and promoting specific products, it prioritises the most likely successful outcome for each customer interaction.

Bengaluru Hosts a Broader Range of In-house AI Tools

Apart from using Microsoft Azure and OpenAI, Kimberly-Clark is also building its own AI solutions. Its Global AI Center of Excellence in Bengaluru supports projects like KC-GPT, a custom version of ChatGPT enriched with the company’s own data.

Bots like ‘Fuel’ help teams find insights from over 15 years of market research, while ‘Violet’ helps factory workers follow best practices and use equipment correctly.

The company’s next step is ‘Clark IQ,’ a single interface that automatically directs user questions to the right AI tool or database. This means employees no longer need to know where to look. Clark IQ finds the best answer for them.

Clark IQ aims to make it easier for employees to get what they need quickly without having to figure out which system has the answer.

8x Growth

Kimberly-Clark said its Bengaluru team has been growing exponentially. “It was a small investment, about two and a half million dollars, with a very skeletal team when we started,” revealed Jayabalan. According to him, the company has grown eight times in the last five and a half years.

“I think it was around 40or 45 people back then. Today, we’ve grown to more than 400,” said Jayabalan. This is almost 8x growth in team size.

 “So if we continue with this, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t continue on a trajectory like this,” he added. 

Jayabalan said their GCC in Bengaluru makes all the difference. He pointed out that the team is much closer to the business and the customers than any system integrator partners or IT service providers. 

He concluded by saying that for GCCs, the speed to market is significantly faster, and the ability to witness multiple cycles of innovation and iterations is much greater. As a result, the stickiness and engagement are notably stronger.

The post When Bengaluru Put Diapers on the Map appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Over three decades strong, Canadian information management giant OpenText recently highlighted its growth in India by expanding its Bengaluru-based centre of excellence (CoE). Spanning over 70,000 sqft, the new facility is an addition to the focused expansion plans that the MNC has in India. 

The CoE is not a mere back office; it houses engineering and product development teams that focus on OpenText’s business clouds, AI, cybersecurity, and DevOps. There are over 6000 employees in India, contributing to almost 25% of the company’s global workforce. Interestingly, the last two years alone saw an increase of 194% in the Bengaluru workforce. 

“The talent pool is clearly in India,” said Saurabh Saxena, regional vice president of OpenText India, in an exclusive interaction with AIM. 

“The unique thing about India is that the talent pool is not stagnant. In some of the other countries, once a generation of the talent pool is exhausted, you don’t have a second generation. But in India, the talent pool is continuous in nature, and that gives us the unique opportunity to tap into it. That’s why almost every organisation, including OpenText, is betting aggressively on the CoE talent pool,” he said. 

In addition to the talent pool, the team attributes the Indian government’s AI focus as an attractive reason for growth. “With all the digitisation efforts, if you look at the initiatives that the government of India has, some of them are really world-class. That’s a huge opportunity for OpenText,” Kapil Kaul, regional vice president of presales at APAC, told AIM.  

Bengaluru Remains a GCC HotSpot

At the recent Bengaluru Tech Summit, the Karnataka government introduced the GCC Policy 2024 to position itself as a global innovation hub and create 3.5 lakh jobs by 2029. The initiative is set to attract 500 new GCCs to the state and potentially create an economic output of $50 billion. 

Karnataka’s IT minister Priyank M Kharge led a discussion at the event highlighting the state’s position as a global hub for GCCs and the government’s dedication to driving growth and innovation in the sector. 

“Bengaluru Tech Summit is a testament to Karnataka’s global leadership in technology and innovation. Through the GCC Policy and forums like this, we aim to ensure that Karnataka remains the top destination for GCCs to thrive and innovate,” he said. 

As per AIM Research, GCCs employ over 2.2 million people in India, with major hubs in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Mumbai. Bengaluru’s large share (34%) highlights its position as India’s top hub for GCCs, supported by its strong IT industry, skilled workforce, and good infrastructure.  

As of September this year, Bengaluru was home to approximately 450 GCCs. It can also be attributed to Bengaluru being an early player in the IT sector, making it a preferred choice for GCCs. 

According to the Karnataka government’s latest GCC policy, 500 new GCCs have been established in the state, with an overall goal of reaching 1,000 by 2029.

India-Centric 

In India, OpenText’s suite of products is implemented across sectors, including BFSI, telecom, pharmaceuticals, and others. The company claims that eight out of the 10 largest banks in the country use OpenText solutions.  

It refers to its operations in India as innovation centres rather than traditional CoE.  While the centres handle back-office functions, the emphasis is on driving technological advancements and innovation within the country. 

“If you’ve got 5,000-6,000 engineers working purely on product development, engineering and professional services, then there’s a strong innovation hub,” said Saxena. 

Aviators and Agentic AI 

While the year of agentic AI is going full-swing with enterprises extensively jumping on the bandwagon, OpenText has also come out with an agentic suite of products. 

OpenText’s Aviator platform is a generative AI solution that supports multiple applications across industries. Complementing this is the Agentic Framework, which introduces autonomous agents capable of handling multi-step business processes. There are 15 Aviators and over 100 agents. 

“With agent technology, you’re looking at a future where things could be solved across multiple clouds and multiple processes. And, what is causing this shift is efficiency. Because not within one solution is the process finishing. It’s actually crossing multiple different solutions, and that’s where the focus is,” explained Kaul when asked about the current trend and focus for the agentic workforce. 

With the newly expanded facility that can house 657 people and facilities in other cities like Hyderabad, OpenText is pretty solid about leveraging Indian talent for OpenText’s success. The team even joked about Bengaluru’s weather being an incentive behind the expansion plans. Conducive weather being an advantage or not, Bengaluru is sure emerging as the hotspot for GCCs in the world.  

The post Bengaluru Emerges as the Hotspot for GCCs appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

The year 2024 witnessed a spate of expansions of global capability centres (GCC) in the country. What truly stood out is India’s confident strides in crushing the traditional view of the country as a back-office operations hub.

At the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2024, the Karnataka government announced the launch of India’s first GCC policy and strategic MoUs with global tech giants, with an aim to train 1 lakh professionals in the next year.

“Our state is the preferred destination for GCC, boasting unmatched engineering talent and the highest number of AI professionals globally,” said chief minister Siddaramaiah, emphasising the state’s commitment to technological advancement. 

Bangalore still Reigns as the GCC Hub

As per data, Karnataka hosts over 875 GCCs, over 30% of India’s total, employs 6 lakh people (35% of India’s GCC workforce) and contributes $22.2 billion annually. By 2029, the state targets 1,000 GCCs, 3,50,000 new jobs, and $50 billion in output.

Going beyond Bengaluru as the primary GCC hub, cities like Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, and Chennai are emerging as strong competitors. Tier-II cities like Jaipur, Vadodara, Coimbatore, and Kochi also gain traction, signalling a shift in GCC location preferences. More specifically, around 1,744 global capability centres are strategically spread driving innovation while boosting India’s role as a global business powerhouse.

Several notable expansions that took place this year include Bengaluru-led GCC expansions with Apple’s first R&D subsidiary, StoneX’s new office, SurveyMonkey’s GCC, Walmart Global Tech’s 1-million-square-foot lease deal to establish a GCC, and innovation hubs by New Relic and DocuSign. In Mumbai, Morgan Stanley opened a 1-million-square-foot campus for 8,500 employees. In Hyderabad, InvoiceCloud launched its first office, while Haryana welcomed an R&D facility from Comtrend.

More Women Leaders 

Another key trend reportedly observed this year was the growing presence of women in leadership roles in GCCs in India. Some of the leaders include Optum MD Uma Ratnam Krishnan, HSBC India Global Service Centres MD Mamatha Madireddy, Siemens Healthineers’ executive director Kalavathi GV, Merck IT Centre chief Anuprita Bhattacharya, and 7-Eleven’s SVP of shared services Jennifer Goschke, among others. 

This trend reflects a much-needed shift in organisations in India, which are prioritising diversity and inclusion, especially compared to the country’s predominantly male-dominated IT sector. 

As per the Karnataka GCC Policy, Bengaluru has the highest number of female employable talent in India. Women are increasingly being employed in high-tech and leadership roles within GCCs, driven by inclusive hiring practices and tailored skill development programs.

Finally, GCCs vs IT Companies 

India’s GCC sector is experiencing remarkable growth, employing over 1.6 million professionals. According to EY, this expansion is expected to continue, with projections indicating more than 2,400 GCCs in India by 2030, which can create over 4.5 million jobs. The market size is anticipated to grow significantly, rising from the current $45 billion to $110 billion by 2030. 

GCCs offer significantly higher salaries, with compensation for software developers ranging from ₹9.7 lakh to ₹43 lakh annually, compared to ₹5.7 lakh to ₹17.9 lakh in IT services for similar roles. Entry-level salaries at GCCs are also up to 30% higher than the average across sectors. GCCs emphasise innovation, particularly in AI, cloud computing, and cybersecurity, positioning themselves as leaders in tech transformation. In contrast, Indian IT companies focus on maintaining existing projects, while lagging in generative AI and R&D investment due to high costs. 

In a conversation with AIM, Mohandas Pai, chairman of Aarin Capital and former Infosys executive, noted that Indian IT traditionally excels in services, not products, reflecting a conservative approach to innovation. 

All things considered, GCCs in India are heavily focused on building AI capabilities and driving AI transformation within their organisations. About 70% of India’s GCCs are reportedly adopting generative AI. The most sought-after tech roles in GCCs include software engineers, developers, data specialists, AI and machine learning experts, cloud computing professionals, and cybersecurity specialists.

The post No More Back Office as India’s GCCs Take the Front Seat appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

According to the recent Nasscom-Zinnov report, by 2024, India’s Global Capability Centers (GCCs) will have grown to 1,700, generating $64.6 billion in export revenue and employing over 1.9 million people. Notably, over 15% of these employees are in the healthcare and life sciences sectors.

Indian GCCs in healthcare are leading the efforts in drug discovery and development by harnessing computational chemistry, bioinformatics, and AI-driven platforms. These centres are accelerating the R&D of new drugs and bringing them to market faster than ever before. 

By integrating advanced analytics and data-driven insights, Indian GCCs are making significant contributions to global healthcare innovation, improving patient outcomes on a broader scale.

In an exclusive conversation with AIM, Balasubramanian Sankaranarayanan, the CEO & president of Thryve Digital LLP, said, “In healthcare GCCs, we focus on a specific vertical, dedicating our entire efforts to it. Our goal is to find individuals deeply engaged in healthcare and provide them with opportunities to take on much larger career roles.” 

Headquartered in Chennai, Thryve Digital Health creates solutions that enable the “payvider” (pay provider) network with the intelligence, connectivity, and seamless integration demanded by its multi-platform healthcare systems. 

“While many large IT service companies have healthcare verticals, true healthcare expertise exists in only a small percentage of their workforce. Among the top healthcare verticals, you might find 50,000 people, but fewer than 1% truly understand the industry at a deep level,” Sankaranarayanan noted.  

Employees, Cost, and More

As of 2023, over 80 healthcare & life science GCCs have employed more than  250k employees in India. The CEO mentioned that their objective is to build Thryve with that 1% of healthcare-focused experts who not only understand the domain but also grasp the business, technical, and customer challenges. 

The Indian government aims to have 2,400–2,500 GCCs operating nationwide by 2030, with a workforce of over 4.5 million people. 

However, given today’s cost-constrained economy and the need to fund future initiatives, businesses are under pressure to extract more value. Enterprises, especially in sectors like healthcare, are constantly reimagining the future, and that requires substantial investment. But where will these dollars come from? 

According to Sankaranarayanan, the answer lies in optimisation and efficiency.

Labour arbitrage has already provided a lot of initial value, but now these companies need to go further. Establishing a GCC in countries like India presents an immediate 20% cost differential compared to working with service providers. These savings go directly back into the enterprise because GCCs aren’t focused on generating margins but on optimising operations.

When companies set up their GCCs, they immediately see a 20% cost reduction. Whether they choose GCCs or service providers, the talent pool remains similar. 

He further pointed out that relying solely on a GCC or a service provider has its trade-offs. With service providers, enterprises benefit from learning across multiple customers and industries and the innovation investments made by these providers. GCCs, on the other hand, provide talent access but miss out on some of those external advantages. 

What GCCs offer is a short- to medium-term cost benefit, which can be as high as 20%. So, many companies, like Thryve, adopt a hybrid strategy. It operates with 80% of its own GCC setup while maintaining partnerships with key service providers to balance the best of both worlds. 

This allows them to gradually transition work from external partners into the GCC, especially higher-end work that might require proprietary frameworks or intellectual property not suitable for outsourcing. 

What’s GCC to Healthcare Sectors?

Beyond the usual tasks undertaken by healthcare GCCs, like transforming data processes in clinical trials and enhancing supply chain management, Thryve Digital Healthcare is also looking to work towards the administrative part. 

“For example, in claims processing, understanding the intricacies across different claim types—whether commercial, government, or Medicare/Medicaid—is crucial. This knowledge extends to how our platform handles claims, improves auto-adjudication rates, and streamlines processes, leading to greater efficiency and customer satisfaction. Even small improvements in these areas can lead to significant gains,” Sankaranarayanan said. 

ANSR Research quotes a case study that focuses on a German healthcare solutions provider that expanded its digital health capabilities in India by leveraging AI and other advanced technologies to improve patient care and diagnostics. 

The company’s GCC in India, established in 2008 and spread across Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Gurugram, functions as an innovation hub with a workforce of 4,000-5,000 employees. 

The solutions developed at the Indian GCC include the AI Pathway Companion, which integrates patient data across different sources to aid in better decision-making; the AI-Rad Companion, which automates analysis and quantification of clinical imaging data; and the Patient Experience App, which enhances MRI patient experiences using Augmented Reality (AR). 

What’s Next?

Scaling data and AI in an enterprise context is crucial, and it’s something many GCCs are actively working on. If they can achieve AI at scale, it becomes a straightforward lift and shift to apply those insights to even rural India, where scalable and equitable access is essential to drive the right outcomes.

Many of these use cases will initially focus on more standardised medical protocols, like retinopathy, where there’s a clear SOP. According to Sankaranarayanan, radiology accounts for about 70% of AI models, while cardiovascular applications make up another 15%. In India, ophthalmology is a key area, and AI models are already delivering high-quality results.

Meanwhile, the healthcare sector is witnessing a strong influx of funding. Recently, Bengaluru-based startup Even Healthcare, which provides facilities such as consultation and hospitalisation to its members, raised $30 million in funding led by Silicon Valley-based Khosla Ventures.

In another update, Microsoft has announced new healthcare data and AI tools, including a collection of medical imaging models, a healthcare agent service, and an automated documentation solution for nurses. 

The post ‘Healthcare GCCs in India Help Cut Costs by 20%’ appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

The Indian IT services industry is grappling with a major challenge as clients increasingly build new AI projects in-house. This shift is reflected in the rising number of Global Capability Centers (GCCs) being established in India, enabling multinational companies to tap directly into the country’s vast software talent pool.

To tackle this, Indian IT has adopted a new strategy. They are now prepared to work with GCCs and help them establish their offices in India. 

“We are working very closely with GCCs all around – working with clients when they set up their GCCs in India,” said Infosys’ chief executive officer, Salil Parekh, during the company’s recent earnings call, adding that the company is involved during the build-operate-transfer process. 

He also mentioned that they help GCCs in India in scaling and recruitment. Though he didn’t name any specific GCC, he mentioned that in India they are working with a large number of GCCs in financial services, telecommunications, and life sciences, helping and supporting them.

Sharing similar views, Wipro chief Srini Pallia said, “As far as GCCs are concerned, it’s our strategy to partner with them. All of us know that GCCs are growing significantly in India at this point in time.” Pallia is particularly interested in leveraging Wipro’s employees trained in generative AI.

“We have trained 230,000 employees in generative AI and have 44,000 advanced AI experts. We have the talent, and we can groom it, allowing GCCs and us to partner in executing projects. So, I see this as a win-win for both of us,” he said, adding that Wipro is prepared to partner with them not just on the BOT, but also on many projects.

The GCCs and Indian IT will coexist, according to HCLTech chief C Vijay Kumar. “There is a certain type of work that is best done in an outsourced model, and a certain type of work that customers might want to do in-house,” he said.

He suggested that while some of this market share is moving to GCCs, this shift is not detrimental to the overall growth opportunities for service providers. “I think there is a slight deflation in the total addressable market for service providers, but it is insignificant because, if you look at the total addressable market for large GSIs, it exceeds one trillion dollars,” he said.

“From that perspective, some market share going to GCCs doesn’t really impact the overall growth opportunities for service providers,” he added.

Era of GCCs

India’s GCC sector is thriving and currently employs over 1.6 million professionals. According to EY, this growth will persist, with projections showing over 2,400 GCCs in India by 2030, generating jobs for over 4.5 million people. 

The market size is expected to surge to $110 billion by 2030 from the current $45 billion. 

In comparison, roughly 5.4 million people were employed in the Indian IT sector as of March 2023, according to MeitY and ICRA expects the Indian IT services industry to see revenue growth of 4-6% in FY2025.

“GCCs’ share in Indian IT and engineering services will grow due to the scaling of existing GCCs. The impact of new GCC growth will be smaller. India has 1,500+ GCCs, and most Fortune 1000 firms have GCCs in India. For new GCCs, the target profile is Fortune 1000–5000 firms and new tech firms,” said Pareekh Jain, the CEO of EIIRTrend, Pareekh Consulting.

Cities like Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bangalore have emerged as the preferred hubs for GCCs.

GCCs Pay Higher than Indian IT 

The increasing number of GCCs in India indicates a trend where more professionals are gravitating toward these organisations. A recent report reveals that GCCs offer salaries 12-20% higher than those in IT services and other non-tech industries for comparable tech roles. 

For instance, GCCs provide salaries ranging from INR9.7 lakh to INR 43 lakh per annum for software developers, depending on experience. In contrast, the IT products and services sector offers around INR 5.7 lakh per annum for entry-level roles, with salaries going up to INR 17.9 lakh per annum for professionals with over eight years of experience.

Moreover, entry-level talent at GCCs in India is attracting pay packages that are, on average, up to 30% higher than entry-level salaries across all sectors.

GCCs in India place a great emphasis on developing AI capabilities and leading AI transformation within their organisations. The most in-demand tech roles at GCCs include software engineers, developers, data specialists, AI and machine learning experts, cloud computing professionals, and cybersecurity experts.

Meanwhile, Indian IT is still testing the waters with generative AI and has yet to build an impressive product. The industry is currently focused on maintaining existing projects rather than creating something revolutionary. A primary reason for this reluctance is that investing in R&D requires significantly more capital than simply pushing existing solutions into the market.

Mohandas Pai, the chairman of Aarin Capital and former CFO of Infosys, told AIM that it has always been ideal for Indian IT companies to focus on services. “Indian IT services companies are not product companies,” said Pai.

However, it doesn’t come as a surprise that most Indian IT companies, such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech, and LTIMindtree, are somewhat conservative in disclosing specific details or numbers related to their generative AI initiatives, especially concerning the financial impact or granular operational metrics.

The post Indian IT Is Trying Really Hard to Woo GCCs appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

As Generative AI rapidly transitions from experimentation to production, industry leaders gathered at the MachineCon GCC Summit 2024 event to share real-world examples and insights on leveraging it.

The panel, moderated by Shashank Garg, CEO of Infocepts, included executives from Broadridge, Rakuten India, Grant Thornton, AlphaSense, and Schneider Electric.

It included Sheenam Ohrie (Managing Director at Broadridge), Anirban Nandi (Head of AI Products & Analytics at Rakuten India), Kalpana Balasubramanian (CEO and Chief Thinker at Grant Thornton), Amod Deshpande (Country Managing Director, India at AlphaSense), and Madhu Hosadurga (Global Vice President, Enterprise AI at Schneider Electric).

GenAI Adoption in Highly Regulated Industries

Broadridge’s Sheenam Ohrie kicked off the conversation with real-world examples of how their organisations are leveraging Generative AI.

Ohrie explained that Broadridge, a highly regulated tech organization that provides a platform for investor communications and capital markets, is using it for customer-facing applications such as BondGPT, an interactive chatbot that helps investors understand the vast landscape of available bonds.

They also use it internally for a chatbot called BroadGPT, which is used daily by 2,500 to 3,000 associates. Additionally, Broadridge has developed OpsGPT, a tool that enables transparency and smoother operations for transaction settlements, and DistributionGPT, which provides insights to wealth managers.

Ohrie emphasized the importance of focusing on non-functional requirements (NFRs) before starting any innovative projects.

“The most important thing when we start off on anything which is innovative is to first understand how we’re protecting the PII data, how we’re protecting any kind of leakage of data to the external world, and the third is cybersecurity,” she said. “We really focus on these three aspects from an NFR perspective before we start off anything.”

Nandi highlighted Rakuten’s aim to become an AI-empowered company by 2024. They have developed their own Japanese LLM and are applying AI in three categories: internal applications for increasing productivity, customer-facing applications, and partnerships with companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Rakuten has built an in-house framework called Rakuten AI, which has over 20,000 active users and 7,000 daily active users.

Balasubramanian mentioned that Grant Thornton, a digital consulting firm specializing in new tech, is actively using Generative AI to assist in content production, training, legal risk management, and contract management. They see the most value in customer-facing applications where AI can significantly increase customer value or reduce time.

Deshpande shared that AlphaSense, a financial market research product, has been integrating Generative AI since 2017-2018. They are launching a new product that uses a state-of-the-art Generative AI stack to provide personalized summaries and suggestions to users based on their behaviour and interests.

“The entire search model is changing to a push model,” Deshpande explained. “Before you know it, you will be getting a reading summarization and suggestions that this is what you should be looking at right now.”

Hosadurga discussed how Schneider Electric, with 160,000 employees worldwide, uses AI for chatbots, knowledge management, last-mile automation, and content generation. They have automated a significant portion of their digital asset management for product catalogs and images using Generative AI, which previously required agencies.

“Most of our images get into multiple platforms like the e-commerce shop, ourselves, the partners, the marketplaces,” Hosadurga said. “So it’s a very difficult landscape out there to manage these digital assets consistently across thousands of platforms. So far we were using agencies to do this job. Now, thanks to Gen-AI, a good amount of that work has been automated.”

Data Security and Ethical Considerations

The panelists also addressed data security and ethical considerations. Hosadurga explained that Schneider Electric has blocked public AI platforms and instead uses an enterprise version with a one-way architecture to ensure confidentiality. They enrich pre-trained models with internal information using a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architecture.

Nandi highlighted the need for observability and hallucination measurements in Generative AI models. Rakuten has developed a product called Gen-I that detects security threats in prompts and provides observability for responses.

“Internally, a business can make a decision, I don’t even want to send the prompt to OpenAI or even our own LLM model,” Nandi said. “Some businesses choose to take the risk and send prompts to AI models, but they want to be notified when a user sends a prompt to verify it is appropriate. Once the prompt is sent and a response is received, observability is crucial to detect any inaccuracies or hallucinations in the generated output.”

This has significantly improved their internal AI applications and given them the confidence to develop customer-facing applications.

Solving Real Business Pain Points

The panel further focused on the importance of solving real business pain points with Generative AI. Garg gave an example of using AI to create hyper-personalized product descriptions for e-commerce websites, significantly increasing customer value and reducing the time required for manual copywriting.

“If you combine the power of data and behavioral profiles that we already create for our clients, potential clients in the digital world, and then use Gen AI to on the fly create hyper-personalized product descriptions, what’s called copywriting,” Garg explained. “So, going from 7 copywriters writing manually product descriptions for 100,000 products, you go to millions of descriptions on the fly using the power of Gen AI.”

Nandi emphasized the need to focus on solving business pain points rather than just generating more content. “Imagine a situation where you have customer service, and you call up, and it gets escalated to the next agent, and the next manager, next one.

Why does the wait time increase? Because from the first person, when it goes to the second person in the call center line, somebody is actually going through the transcript of what was discussed. Can Gen AI actually summarize that?”

As the panel concluded, the speakers agreed that Generative AI is rapidly moving from experimentation to production, with enterprises across various industries finding innovative ways to leverage the technology. However, they stressed the importance of implementing proper security measures, ethical guidelines, and observability to ensure responsible and safe adoption.

The post Generative AI Moves from Hype to Enterprise Adoption appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.