From Cost Centers to Core Strategy: The Rise and Rise of GCCs
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A profound transformation has been quietly reshaping the contours of global enterprise strategy. Once viewed narrowly as offshore execution arms or cost-optimization levers, Global Capability Centers (GCCs) have rapidly evolved into strategic anchors of innovation, digital leadership, and global competitiveness. Today, more than 1,700 GCCs operate across the country — employing close to 2 million professionals. As companies across industries, sizes and geographies rethink their global operating models, GCCs in India are playing an increasingly pivotal role in shaping outcomes and accelerating future readiness.
GCCs, Then and Now: From Support Arms to Strategic Engines
There was a time when India’s Global Capability Centers (GCCs) were perceived as back-end support arms — offshore extensions doing routine, process-driven tasks. The early 2000s saw what many describe as GCC 1.0: call centers, customer service functions, transactional finance operations. But fast forward to today, and the evolution is stark. What we’re witnessing now is nothing short of GCC 8.0 — centers that are not just supporting the business, but defining its future.
GCCs have moved to the top of the value chain. These are no longer cost centers or talent arbitrage engines. They are product creators, transformation catalysts, and digital accelerators. They are building what’s next. Whether it’s reimagining the technology stack for a global retailer, modernizing supply chains for a manufacturer, or deploying AI-driven underwriting models for a bank — this kind of work is mission-critical.
The Evolution of Global Workflows: GCCs on Top
If you were to stack rank how work gets done globally — from outsourced offshore to headquarters core — GCCs would now sit at the very top of the pyramid. Companies once wary of remote, distributed teams now view them as a strategic asset. In many cases, GCCs are the first to fill global job requisitions, ahead of onshore teams. A leading airline, for instance, now opens key roles simultaneously across three hubs — including Bangalore — and it’s often the India hub that gets to work first.
The pandemic reset corporate imagination. Pre-COVID, co-located teams were still the default. Post-COVID, the mantra became: “any work, anywhere, anytime.” Distributed workforces are now the norm — dramatically accelerating the globalization of high-value work via GCCs.
As one global CTO recently said: “My Bangalore team isn’t just shipping code. They’re shaping what the company becomes next.”
The Rise of Leapfroggers — and a New Wave of Builders
The GCC model has become so compelling that companies are now skipping traditional stages of growth and immediately establishing full-fledged GCCs. These are businesses with no prior presence in India, nor an outsourcing legacy, but they are now setting up strong GCCs in cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad.
What’s especially noteworthy is that these new GCCs benefit from the ‘day-one innovation’ learned from more established counterparts. Leveraging insights and best practices honed over years of experience, emerging GCCs can hit the ground running. They’re equipped to build strong talent pipelines, foster effective cross-cultural collaboration, and integrate advanced technologies from the outset. This maturity enables them to rapidly scale and achieve meaningful business outcomes, avoiding the growing pains that many early GCCs faced.
GCCs Become Size-Agnostic: The Rise of Emerging Growth and PE-Backed Sector
As GCC models evolve, they are becoming size-agnostic. India now hosts over 480 mid-market GCCs, with more than 120 new ones expected in the next year. This includes a rising number of emerging growth companies and PE-backed firms, all establishing their own GCCs to leverage India’s rich talent pool and fuel their global expansion.
These companies, often in the midst of rapid growth or transformation, are turning to GCCs as a strategic enabler to accelerate their global competitiveness. By setting up operations in India, they tap into a high-quality, digitally native talent pool that helps them achieve results faster. Without the scale of large Fortune 500 GCCs, these firms are able to scale quickly, experiment freely, and see tangible outcomes sooner. This agility allows them to innovate and expand with speed, gaining a competitive edge in the global market.
Nurturing the Next Generation of Global Leaders
India’s GCCs are also emerging as leadership factories. With more ownership, more complexity, and more proximity to business-critical work, GCCs are where future global leaders are being shaped.
Today, we’re seeing India-based talent take on roles with global remits — from leading product portfolios to heading enterprise-wide transformation programs. In fact, several global CXOs are now alums of their India GCCs — a strong signal of how leadership pathways are being redefined from the global south.
One example stands out: a large U.S. home improvement company appointed a tech leader who had grown through the ranks in its India GCC — and today, this leader serves as the global CTO, still based in India. It’s a powerful indicator of how GCCs are no longer just delivery arms but environments that nurture global leadership and contribute to enterprise-wide decision-making at the highest level.
The Future Is GCC — and It’s Happening Now
As we enter the AI-first era, the rise of GCCs will only accelerate further. AI is redefining work, reshaping productivity benchmarks, retooling skills, and demanding new delivery frameworks. GCCs that embed AI at the heart of their operating models will emerge as the growth engines of their enterprises—driving not just efficiency, but exponential impact.
In the not-so-distant future, we may stop calling them “GCCs” altogether. They’ll just be centers of gravity — the places where the real work gets done, the next generation of leaders is forged, and the future of the company is imagined.
And this time, it won’t just be the big names — it will be emerging growth-stage companies building global ambition from day one. With the right bets on talent and infrastructure, India is poised to remain the epicenter of global enterprise evolution.
