Not long ago, India’s GCCs were largely judged by the size of their workforce. Every new campus announcement came with promises of thousands of jobs, reinforcing India’s position as the world’s preferred destination for technology and business operations. Today, those metrics are steadily giving way to a different conversation.
AI is forcing enterprises to rethink the role of their India centres. Instead of serving as execution hubs focused on engineering and operational support, GCCs are increasingly being expected to lead product development, shape technology roadmaps, drive customer innovation and create measurable business outcomes.
It represents perhaps the biggest shift in the GCC model since multinational corporations first began establishing technology centres in India decades ago.
For insurance technology company Zinnia, that transition has been gradual but deliberate. The company’s India operations have evolved from supporting back-office insurance processes to becoming an integrated technology and product organisation.
According to Josh Everett, CEO of Zinnia India, the transformation reflects a broader evolution taking place across India’s GCC ecosystem. “I even like to think of Zinnia as a Global Innovation Capability, rather than just a Global Capability Centre,” Everett says. “We have to think about what the next phase looks like. That’s where innovation and AI capabilities come in, they have the potential to lead the world in terms of the amount of transformation and work being done here in India that impacts the globe.”
Beyond cost arbitrage
The evolution of India’s GCC ecosystem has mirrored the changing priorities of global enterprises. Centres that were originally established to deliver cost efficiencies have gradually taken ownership of engineering, product development, cybersecurity, analytics and enterprise transformation.
Zinnia’s own journey reflects that progression. The company entered India in 2014 through an operations-focused centre in Gurugram supporting back-office insurance services. A second centre in Pune expanded its engineering capabilities, while a strategic reset in 2022 repositioned the company from a business process outsourcing provider to a technology-led insurance platform. An acquisition completed in 2024 further strengthened its product portfolio and engineering capabilities, expanding the scope of work carried out from India.
Today, Zinnia employs more than 1,900 people in India, including over 1,100 technologists, with teams spanning engineering, product development, testing, marketing, finance, human resources and operations. The more significant change, however, has been the nature of ownership.
“When we started, we were essentially the ticket taker. Here’s your task, go do your task, complete your engineering, return it, and we’ll take it to production,” Everett says. “Over the years, we’ve become a full end-to-end ecosystem contributing across all capabilities, data, AI, modernisation, advanced analytics, customer experience, user experience, and everything in between.” That transition is increasingly becoming the benchmark for mature GCCs across industries.
The AI maturity test
The emergence of generative AI has accelerated this transformation, but it has also exposed a new challenge. After two years of experimentation, enterprises are under pressure to demonstrate that AI initiatives are creating measurable business value rather than remaining confined to proof-of-concepts.
Everett argues that organisations should avoid measuring AI success purely through productivity gains or cost reduction. “What we look for is how we can take care of the mundane tasks that can be processed by a machine and allow our bright, smart people to focus on work that requires thought leadership,” he says. “The goal is to leverage our people’s skills in different ways to make further progress, eliminate busy work and create more value.”
For him, the ultimate measure of AI is whether it improves business outcomes. “The bigger question is: Is it improving the customer experience? AI should make the customer experience frictionless. It should leverage technology to deliver the request, solution or requirement the first time, with as little friction and as quickly as possible.”
That thinking is shaping the company’s own AI roadmap. Everett says Zinnia currently has between 40 and 50 AI initiatives underway across engineering, product development and insurance operations. These programmes range from accelerating software development to digitising underwriting, claims processing and customer interactions, with the objective of shortening product launch cycles from months to weeks.
Talent remains India’s biggest competitive advantage
Despite the rapid advances in AI, Everett believes technology alone will not determine the success of India’s GCC ecosystem. The country’s greatest advantage continues to be the depth of its engineering and data talent.
“When I think about India, the number one thing we need to deliver on the promise and value of AI is top talent. Some of the best talent in the world is right here in India across data, analytics and engineering,” he says. “The question is how do you bring all of that top talent together to truly transform the industry?”
That observation reflects a broader trend across the GCC landscape. As enterprises move from AI experimentation to enterprise-wide deployment, access to skilled engineers, data scientists and product leaders is becoming a more significant differentiator than infrastructure or cost advantages.
From delivery centre to decision centre
One of the longstanding criticisms of the GCC model has been that while engineering work moved to India, strategic decisions continued to reside at global headquarters.
Everett believes that perception is already changing. “You’re seeing a number of organisations and GCCs with very senior leaders based here, including executives and, in some cases, board-level leaders,” he says. “That transformation has been underway for several years. It’s creating greater visibility, transparency and accountability to deliver the outcomes organisations are looking for.”
His assessment aligns with a broader trend across the industry, where India centres are increasingly influencing product strategy, customer engagement and business planning rather than simply executing engineering mandates.
Zinnia’s own India operations now extend beyond supporting global customers. Through its 2024 acquisition, the company also serves insurance clients in the Indian market, highlighting how GCCs are increasingly becoming business hubs rather than purely offshore support centres.
The next chapter of India’s GCC story
As India’s GCC ecosystem enters its next phase, the conversation is moving beyond expansion plans and hiring targets. The more pressing question is whether organisations are prepared to transfer greater ownership of products, AI initiatives and business outcomes to their India teams.
Everett believes organisations entering India should scale deliberately, remain flexible and invest heavily in talent while ensuring close collaboration between headquarters and local leadership.
“Be phased in your approach. Have a well-thought-out strategy, but be willing to pivot,” he says. “Find great talent. Bright, smart people do incredibly great things. Once you set foot in India, you gain a completely different perspective and appreciation for how work happens here.”
For India’s GCC sector, AI is no longer simply another technology wave. It is becoming the catalyst for redefining what these centres exist to do. The next generation of GCCs is unlikely to be judged by the number of engineers they employ, but by the products they create, the decisions they influence and the innovation they deliver to the global enterprise. Companies like Zinnia offer an early glimpse of that transition, but whether it becomes the industry norm will depend on how successfully enterprises convert India’s vast engineering talent into genuine centres of global innovation.