From Back Office To Brain Trust: Why GCCs Need To Become AI Innovation Engines
India's global capability centers (GCCs) are light years from where they started life as low-cost delivery centers. They now occupy a position of leadership at the intersection of enterprise retransformation and technological rebirth. As the era of AI-born business speeds up, GCCs come to a critical juncture: Will they drive change to intelligence-driven innovation or be left in the dust?
In order to survive this new world, GCCs will have to transform from execution machines to AI-fueled centers of innovation. The potential is not abstract—it's already taking shape, and India is particularly well-placed to drive it.
India's Strategic Advantage: Talent With Traction
India's advantage isn't in quantities, but in quality. Indian GCCs now boast more than 160,000 product professionals. No longer are they passive appendages to global operations but serve as active co-creators of value.
For example, look at RapidAI: It co-produced real-time stroke care technology from its India center. Or consider Mercari India, which was instrumental in pioneering mobile payments and digital asset platforms. These instances show a broader movement: India is no longer implementing innovation—it is pioneering it.
Four Imperatives To Redefine GCCs
To maximize AI, GCCs need to reinvent their setup, strategy and capabilities. Here's how the most advanced centers are redirecting:
1. Build capability tracks, not career rracks. Rather than vertical hierarchies, GCCs are enabling cross-disciplinary development in AI engineering, platform design and product strategy, fostering innovation through integrated teams.
2. Co-create IP with business units. GCCs are putting engineers and product leaders in business pods together to co-design roadmaps—not just implement them. This combination brings velocity, pertinence and ingenuity.
3. Institutionalize AI-first centers of excellence. At the forefront of GCCs are codifying their innovation frameworks with results-driven centers of excellence (CoEs) in generative AI, intelligent automation and cyber resilience. These are not think tanks—these are creators of measurable value.
4. Align KPIs with outcomes, not outputs. Legacy delivery metrics are being replaced by impact-based KPIs—like AI model deployment rate, product velocity and innovation cycles with business outcomes.
The AI-First Operating Playbook
GCCs at the forefront of this transformation are adopting a systematic, AI-native model for transformation that entails:
• AI-Native Development Environments: Integration of AI across all phases of product delivery from development to test and deployment speeds up and streamlines.
• Data As A Product: GCCs are shifting focus from data management to generating monetizable insights-as-a-service through strong governance.
• Adaptive Applications: Static platforms are giving way to smart systems that tailor experiences and adapt based on user behavior. Services-as-software are being redesigned as modular, reusable AI building blocks that scale effectively across functions.
• Responsible AI Governance: Ethical AI practices, performance dashboards and business-aligned impact metrics are now integrated into GCC operating frameworks from the ground up.
While GCCs enjoy significant in-house momentum, many struggle at scale with AI solutions. Poor access to nascent technologies, toolchains and industry patterns is a common roadblock. Here's where specialist system integrators (SIs) play key collaborative partners—never to outsource but to speed things up.
A hybrid GCC-SI model can enable businesses to combine profound internal knowledge with external execution speed and expert AI knowledge.
Where GCCs Should Cooperate
To accelerate impact, GCCs need to collaborate with specialist SIs in these strategic domains:
• AI Model Development: For enterprise-level personalization and decision intelligence.
• Cybersecurity And Risk: AI-driven threat monitoring for threats, fraud and compliance.
• Cloud And MLOps: Scalable infrastructure for continuous AI delivery and monitoring.
• Business Process Automation: Intelligent workflows in finance, HR and supply chain.
• Industry-Specific AI Solutions: Industry-specific use cases in BFSI, healthcare, retail and more.
• Data Ethics And Governance: Fairness, explainability and auditability.
• Future-Proofing with Next-Gen AI Readiness: Understanding quantum and edge AI technologies for future-proofing.
A Blueprint For Strategic Co-Ownership
The future will not be for GCCs that are stuck in legacy models or attempt to scale AI alone. It will be for those that assume ownership of AI strategy and governance, with the ability to scale innovation quickly and responsibly with the help of trusted partners.
India's GCCs are poised to lead this transformation, with the market projected to grow from $64.6 billion in FY24 to over $100 billion by FY30. The moment is now to double down on reinvention—because the GCCs that co-create the future will create the enterprises of tomorrow.
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