Event

Building India GCCs That matter: Technology ambition and operations excellence

Liam Edwards 10 Jun 2026

arial view of expressway

India’s Global Capability Centres have evolved from cost-focused delivery units into strategic value creators, reclaiming core capabilities, accelerating decision-making, and driving innovation aligned to global priorities. For leaders building in India, clarity comes from separating technology objectives from operations objectives, then designing governance, talent, and locations to serve each deliberately.

India remains the leading GCC destination, hosting 1,800+ GCCs and 2.1 million professionals as of the end of 2025, with strong growth projected through 2030. That scale intensifies competition for leadership, with senior compensation reflecting scarcity, especially where leaders hold global functional responsibility alongside an India remit. In practice, the constraint is rarely hiring at volume; it is hiring the right leaders early enough to set culture, governance, and operating model before complexity arrives.

“A GCC’s scale only becomes an advantage when governance, decision rights, and leadership are designed upfront.”

The most effective GCCs are explicit about what they are optimising for: technology outcomes (platform ownership, engineering velocity, product quality) versus operations outcomes (control, resilience, throughput, service performance).

Technology: From “Run and Maintain” to product and platform ownership

 

Modern GCCs increasingly host high-value technology work. AI, data analytics, IoT, cloud engineering, and cybersecurity are moving beyond traditional IT support into end-to-end product lifecycle contribution, spanning discovery, build, run, and continuous improvement. As centres mature, autonomy rises: decisions on technology adoption, architecture, and product roadmaps increasingly sit with GCC leadership. That shift is what distinguishes a delivery centre from a true capability centre, technology becomes an engine for speed-to-market and innovation, not a downstream executor of global requests.

The practical implication is that leaders must design for ownership. Ownership requires clear product boundaries, strong engineering management, and governance that empowers local decision-making while staying aligned to global standards. It also requires a deliberate interface with global teams: how priorities are set, how funding is allocated, how incidents are managed, and how engineering quality is measured. The best builders treat these as operating-system decisions.

 

“The moment a GCC owns platforms and product outcomes, not just tickets, it stops being a cost centre and starts being a strategic lever.”

Leadership: The variable that makes or breaks the build

 

No design choice matters more than the leaders who execute it. The breaks rarely come from a lack of technical skill, they come from leaders who are not aligned to the parent company’s values, or who do not role-model them. Competency drives performance and speed; expertise, inspiring leadership, and a global mindset are what accelerate the build. Year-one hires set the cultural and operating tone that the next thousand hires will absorb, which is why the earliest leadership decisions carry disproportionate leverage. The same logic applies to location: get the operating model and leadership right, and cost takes care of itself.

“Get the model right, and the cost savings will follow.”

One of India’s most distinctive advantages today is the return of senior talent. A growing pool of Indian-origin executives who built careers in London, New York, Singapore, and Hong Kong, across technology, operations, and finance, are actively choosing to return home for the right mandate. These returnees bring global operating standards, deep parent-company fluency, and the credibility to lead at scale from day one. Very few geographies can offer ready-made leadership that combines global pedigree with local market depth, and tapping into this talent pool is often the fastest route to a centre that earns global trust quickly.

AI: A learning phase today, an embedded capability tomorrow

 

AI is reshaping what GCCs are set up to do, but the honest read of the market, particularly in regulated industries, is that we are still in a learning and enablement phase. The current focus is on leveraging end-user AI for productivity, building skills, identifying use cases, and putting controls and governance in place across the full AI chain: infrastructure, cyber, data, APIs, and model architecture. Over the next two to three years, AI will become more deeply embedded in financial services and other regulated sectors, but today, productivity and governance are the right places to invest.

For GCC builders, this has two implications. First, AI use-case ownership is itself becoming a defined role, and that ownership belongs in India where the engineering and domain depth already sits. Second, measurement must extend beyond productivity to include control quality, risk posture, and the new capabilities being created.

“AI is in a fun and community phase across the market. For regulated businesses, the focus right now is productivity, skills, and governance across the AI chain. In two to three years, embedding will follow.”

How Leathwaite helps

 

Leathwaite supports organisations building and scaling India GCCs by bringing market intelligence and senior hiring capability across technology, operations, and finance.

We help clients translate their GCC thesis into leadership, organisation design, and location decisions, then execute the critical hires that set the culture and operating rhythm from day one. This includes GCC Heads and functional leaders (technology, operations, finance, risk and control, HR, transformation) as well as niche specialists across engineering, data, cyber, service management, and operational excellence.

“Sponsorship at the top is good. The bigger move is to be bolder in leveraging the skills in region to lead and drive future transformation.”

Our networks extend across both the domestic market and the global diaspora, giving clients privileged access to senior Indian-origin leaders abroad who are ready to return and lead transformation at home.

“A GCC is built in hiring decisions, get the first ten leaders right and the next thousand hires become easier.”

Liam Edwards

Liam Edwards

Liam is a Senior Associate, within Leathwaite’s Hong Kong office and is a core member of the Global Technology Officer, COO and Digital practices. Liam works with clients across industry sectors with a focus on C-level appointments within technology, operations,…

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