As global organisations increasingly seek to accelerate product innovation, the role of India’s Global Capability Centres has shifted dramatically from cost arbitrage to innovation powerhouses. R Systems, with over 25 years of deep-rooted expertise in product engineering, has been at the forefront of this evolution. The company’s transformation from a services firm to a partner in AI-led product engineering reflects not just changing market dynamics but a proactive vision for the future. In this in-depth conversation, Avirag Jain, Chief Operating Officer at R Systems International, shares the company’s approach to enabling global product delivery through its India GCC, key strategic priorities, and how it helps clients harness innovation at scale.
R Systems has evolved significantly, shifting from a service-focused firm to a partner in product engineering and AI transformation. How has your India GCC evolved to support this shift, and what are the key charters today in global product delivery?
That’s an excellent question. To provide some context, we’ve been engaged in the product engineering space for over 25 years, with around 70% of our business coming from software product engineering, particularly with North American product companies.
In recent years, we’ve seen a surge in large product companies establishing GCCs in India. Given our strong legacy in this domain, we understand precisely what is required to succeed in product engineering. We’re able to extend those capabilities to Indian GCCs today bringing in AI-led SDLC practices, modern frameworks, and strategic tool and technology partnerships. We’ve partnered with approximately 15 GCCs, assisting in both their setup and scale-up, and supporting them through every stage of their evolution.
What are some of the key priorities or critical success factors in global product delivery, particularly in terms of driving client innovation and ownership?
GCCs were once focused on routine or back-office work, but that’s no longer the case. Today, they’ve become strategic innovation centres driving accelerated product delivery and experimentation.
When we engage with a GCC, it’s not just about providing resources. We bring deep domain knowledge, technology expertise, and a rich understanding of industry-specific challenges. Our cross-domain experience enables us to support rapid innovation. Many GCCs benefit from our ability to help them ramp up quickly leveraging experienced engineers at the outset and scaling as the engagement matures.
R Systems positions itself as a high-growth engineering partner to global GCCs across industries. How does the India GCC support this mission through co-building distributed teams, owning delivery roadmaps, or implementing Scaled Agile Frameworks?
Co-delivery is absolutely central to the way we work today. Rather than siloed teams, we now operate distributed ‘pods’ that function as a single, cohesive unit across geographies whether in the US, India, or partner offices elsewhere. Everyone participates in the same Agile sprint, and performance is measured consistently across locations for productivity, innovation, and quality. This kind of joint engineering ensures alignment and shared accountability, regardless of where the team is physically located.
Agile methodologies have also introduced a new level of transparency and rigour. With tools like Jira and Confluence, all metrics, story points, productivity rates, and quality indicators are tracked and visible to everyone. This creates a high-performance culture, where we can identify top performers and address training needs quickly, ultimately driving better outcomes. We embraced these practices well before they became industry standard. The distinction between a project mindset and a product mindset is significant and we’ve always leaned into the latter. Transparency, collaboration, and client trust are foundational for us, and technology has only magnified our ability to deliver value.
Could you share examples where your India GCC has solved complex challenges, perhaps in BFSI, telecom, or healthcare, particularly involving AI, platform engineering, or real-time data products?
Absolutely. In the banking sector, for example, we support a global client with anti-money laundering software scaling their systems and driving innovation for global rollouts. We also developed a proprietary speech analytics tool for banking contact centres, which flags dissatisfied customers or those mentioning competitors helping improve retention and glean customer insights. In healthcare, we recently assisted a major provider in establishing their GCC, ensuring compliance with stringent regulations such as HIPAA and implementing automation across revenue cycle management. Bots are now used to analyse scanned medical documents and automate data entry enhancing accuracy and efficiency.
Security is clearly a critical factor in such partnerships. How do you approach security and compliance, especially when automation and AI are involved?
Security is absolutely non-negotiable for us, especially given our legacy in product engineering. We support clients in achieving full compliance be it HIPAA for healthcare, SOC 2 for financial services, or GDPR for European markets. We routinely set up secure labs, VPNs, and conduct continuous training and internal audits. This has been an embedded part of our operations for years. Our clients trust us not just because of our technical expertise, but because they know their data and intellectual property are safe. This level of trust is fundamental to any successful co-innovation partnership, and we view it as one of our core differentiators.
As India’s GCC sector grows rapidly, what is your roadmap for the next few years in terms of leadership, talent, governance, and innovation capabilities?
India’s GCC sector is on an accelerated growth path, and we are actively supporting around 15 GCCs in their setup or scale-up phases. Our strategy centres around AI-led SDLC automation, product engineering extensions, and robust security frameworks. We support clients across diverse regions India, the US, Canada, Europe, and APAC wherever our expertise is needed.
We’ve brought in leadership talent specifically focused on GCC strategy and continue to invest heavily in AI accelerators, innovation frameworks, and engineering labs. Whether supporting greenfield initiatives often for mid-market, SaaS, health tech, or PE-backed firms or helping mature GCCs become more efficient and agile, our role is to ensure they stay ahead of the curve.
We focus not only on operational efficiency, but also on encouraging teams to experiment with emerging technologies, identify inefficiencies, and accelerate time to market.
With so many global organisations now establishing or expanding GCCs in India, what do you see as the future of these centres? How might their structure evolve?
India’s GCCs are poised to become the epicentre of global innovation. With unmatched talent, scale, and agility, India is now the preferred destination for multinationals seeking rapid innovation. Any Fortune 500 company that has not yet set up in India will likely need to do so to remain competitive.
The conversation is no longer about cost optimisation it’s about value creation. It’s about the ability to innovate and release products at two to three times the speed, not simply saving money. Providers that can support this rapid innovation model those who understand product engineering, not just project delivery will be the ones to thrive. This is no longer a headcount game; it’s about true partnership and delivering measurable impact.