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India’s Global Capability Centers (GCCs) are expanding rapidly into the nerve centres of global innovation, expanding India’s footprint across the borders, designing self-driving car
systems, developing next-gen chips, and crafting climate-resilient supply chains. Initially seen as low-cost back-office operations that were primarily utilitarian, GCCs have evolved
significantly, demonstrating remarkable resilience and growth while driving innovation across multiple functions for their parent organizations. There is a significant momentum in growth of
GCC in India in last few years, with quantum jump in revenue. This momentum is only accelerating, fueled by consistent capability-building across talent, technology, scale, and strategic
intent.
The genesis of India’s GCC story was grounded in operational efficiency. Multinationals came to India seeking cost and capability arbitrage in engineering, IT and business processes.
However, today, the narrative is fast undergoing a transformation towards value creation at global scale. Backed by world-class talent, product development ecosystem and a vibrant digital
infrastructure, GCCs are no longer mere efficient delivery engines but are emerging as global centers of excellence and innovation, driving R&D, product innovation, and digital businesses
globally.
What firmly established India as the GCC capital of the world is the “India GCC stack” - convergence of talent, technology readiness and proactive yet reliable policy framework. India offers
both scale and specificity - India has large pool of technology professionals and significant super specialized expertise. This is the composition that is needed in global enterprises to
solve challenges at the cross section of technology and domain. The change that is seen is the ability of Indian GCCs to drive innovation around AI, Security, cloud, compute in different
domains such as mobility, manufacturing, finance, retail and so on. Centers are increasingly driving R&D, IP creation, and global product ownership, shifting their role from service delivery
to core innovation engines.
This is the transformation in progress of the industry from “serve to spec” to “spec the next”.
Additionally, government initiatives in creating domain specific digital stacks in health, banking, transport, energy coupled with Make/design in India are enabling the innovation landscape.
Vibrant open innovation ecosystem, startups have enhanced the end-to-end product/service capabilities. Competitive Infrastructure and policy push by different state governments to attract
GCCs augurs well for emerging GCC landscape in India.
Engineering Research & Development (ER&D) GCCs have expanded at a pace 1.3 times faster than the overall GCC growth rate, underscoring India's growing role in driving complex, innovation-led
mandates for global enterprises. They are influencing global product roadmaps, playing global leadership roles, owning up localization needs, driving skill transformation – part of
enterprise strategy formulation and execution. It is a pivotal moment for GCCs to convert this advantage by sharp focus on high content-led leadership.
India’s focus on research is increasing significantly with government setting up grants. However, GCCs should be encouraged to participate proactively by committing to solve India specific
problem statements. Incentives towards technology infusion into India can be considered to encourage global enterprises investing on cutting-edge technology topics. Transparent taxation,
robust IP creation and protection goes a long way in creating a conducive environment. Collaboration of GCCs, startups, technology service companies can be the symbiosis of success.
The GCC growth is getting more inclusive not being limited only to large cities. There are new GCCs being established in Tier-II and Tier-III cities like Coimbatore and Indore. Companies are
tapping into fresh, high-potential talent pools that combine strong educational ecosystems with improving infrastructure and digital access. By building distributed talent hubs, enterprises
are creating more flexible, future-proof delivery models, ensuring continuity while scaling faster and smarter.
The National Technology Day is a perfect moment to align industry, academia, and government around a shared mission to empower GCCs to evolve into true innovation launchpads by deepening
their strategic contribution. GCC centers are already leading AI-driven R&D, product development, and IP generation. Formal support for advanced R&D, IP protection, and innovation incentives
will further accelerate this trajectory. By 2030, the GCC market size in India is expected to cross $100 billion, with employment possibility for 2.5 million.
Finally, India must shift from “Make for the World” to “Invent for the World.” With 45% of the world’s GCCs housed in India, the opportunity is to build significant innovation capabilities.
National Technology Day should mark the beginning of this shared mission—making India the world’s hub for invention, innovation and value creation.
Views are personal. The author is President & Managing Director, Bosch Global Software Technologies
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