For years, the growth story of India’s GCCs was told through the single metric of headcount. Every new centre announcement came with promises of thousands of jobs, larger campuses, and aggressive expansion plans. But as AI reshapes enterprise operations, Rajeev Kapoor, Country Head of Curriculum Associates India, believes that narrative is becoming increasingly outdated.
“Headcount is not the right measure of any GCC’s success,” Kapoor says. “The growth of a GCC should be measured by the impact it makes on business outcomes.”
His perspective comes from more than two decades of witnessing the evolution of India’s offshore centres. Long before GCC became a boardroom buzzword, Kapoor saw the industry transition from being called “captives” to Global In-house Centres (GICs) and eventually GCCs. While the terminology changed, the larger transformation has been far more significant.
“In the past, India centres were largely established for cost arbitrage,” he explains. “The work was often peripheral, transactional, or support-oriented. Companies would begin at the edges of the business and gradually move toward the core after proving credibility.”
That model, Kapoor argues, no longer applies to many of the new-generation GCCs. “The newer GCCs are coming in with a completely different mandate. We are not starting from the periphery and moving toward the core. We are starting at the core itself.”
A different kind of GCC
Curriculum Associates, a US-based education technology company serving more than 17 million students, entered India just over two years ago. Unlike traditional offshore operations that begin with support functions, the company established its Bengaluru centre as an integrated extension of its global business from day one.
“India is just another office,” Kapoor says. “The expectation is that teams here will do the same kind of work that happens in the US, Ireland, or any other location.”
That philosophy has shaped the centre’s development. Rather than functioning as a back-office operation, the India team contributes across product development, engineering, finance, human resources, marketing, and technology operations.
“The teams from India are spread across the entire lifecycle of the product,” Kapoor explains. “There is shared ownership. You cannot divide the business and say India owns this part while another geography owns something else. We are integrated across the organisation.”
The approach reflects a broader shift occurring across India’s GCC ecosystem. As enterprises increasingly view India as a strategic talent destination rather than simply a low-cost location, centres are being entrusted with responsibilities that directly influence products, customers, and business strategy.
Building before scaling
For Curriculum Associates, the first two years were less about expansion and more about building foundations.
Kapoor describes the company’s early phase as an intensive effort to identify and develop the right talent. Hiring was deliberately selective, with candidates evaluated through multiple stages before being onboarded. “If you don’t get the right people, you won’t have a strong foundation to deliver,” he says. “Everything starts with talent.”
The company then invested heavily in contextual learning. Employees travelled to the US to understand classrooms and educators firsthand, while global teams visited India to accelerate knowledge transfer and integration.
The result, according to Kapoor, is that the Bengaluru centre has moved from a formation phase into one where it is deeply embedded within key product releases and business initiatives. “Today, people from Bengaluru are playing a very integrated role across all our major products and business functions,” he says.
The AI inflection point
If there is one force redefining the future of GCCs, it is AI. Across industries, organisations are struggling to determine how AI will reshape operating models, productivity, hiring strategies, and workforce planning. Curriculum Associates is no exception.
The company has invested heavily in AI enablement, providing employees access to leading AI platforms and conducting extensive training initiatives. One such effort, dubbed “AI Fluency Days,” brought together teams globally for focused learning on prompt engineering, workflow integration, and agent development.
“Not many companies provide access to multiple AI tools across the organisation,” Kapoor says. “We want every employee to become AI-fluent.”
The benefits are already visible. “We are seeing faster release cycles, more story points being completed, and fewer defects,” he notes. “Features that we expected to deliver in later quarters are already being worked on today.”
Yet Kapoor remains cautious about the industry’s rush to quantify AI returns. “If anyone says they have a perfect model to calculate AI ROI, I would not trust that person right now,” he says. “Everyone is still defining and validating those models.”
Instead of focusing solely on financial metrics, the company is tracking indicators such as development velocity, roadmap execution, software quality, and productivity improvements.
“ROI will be a triangulation of multiple factors,” Kapoor says. “What we definitely see is that teams are able to do more than what we previously thought was possible.”
AI’s impact on hiring
The AI conversation inevitably leads to another pressing question of what happens to jobs? For years, India’s technology industry celebrated growth through workforce expansion. Today, however, AI is forcing leaders to rethink that equation.
Kapoor believes hiring will continue, but the nature of demand will change. “AI will not take your job,” he says. “But your job will be taken if you don’t learn AI.”
Rather than hiring aggressively and then adjusting later, Curriculum Associates is encouraging teams to first integrate AI into their workflows and understand where human capabilities remain essential. “We want teams to stress-test AI first,” Kapoor explains. “Then identify where additional talent is genuinely required.”
This approach reflects a larger reality facing GCCs across India. While new centres continue to be announced every month, future growth may be defined less by workforce size and more by the value each employee creates. “There is still significant room for more GCCs in India,” Kapoor says. “But the conversation is moving from headcount to business outcomes.”
Responsible AI in education
Unlike many enterprise software companies, Curriculum Associates operates in a sector where AI adoption carries additional responsibilities. The company’s products are used by students and educators, making issues such as accuracy, bias, privacy, and learning outcomes especially important.
One of its most significant AI initiatives stems from an acquisition in Ireland, where the company gained access to voice AI technology that helps teachers identify reading and literacy challenges among students.
The technology can analyse pronunciation, phonics, and comprehension patterns, giving educators deeper insights into student performance. “The goal is to make teachers more effective,” Kapoor says. “AI is helping educators understand where students need support.”
Importantly, the company has chosen to place teachers, not algorithms, at the centre of decision-making. “Our philosophy is responsible use of AI,” Kapoor says. “We want AI to empower teachers rather than replace human judgement.”
That principle extends to content creation as well. As concerns grow around synthetic data and AI-generated educational materials, the company maintains a strict human-review process. “Synthetic content is generated in accordance with responsible AI principles, with meaningful human oversight throughout the process,” Kapoor says. “Human reviewers remain accountable for validating accuracy, appropriateness, fairness, and educational value before content is used.”
The next phase
At roughly 350 employees, Curriculum Associates’ India centre remains relatively young compared to some of the larger GCCs operating in the country. Yet Kapoor is reluctant to define success through future hiring numbers.
Expansion, he insists, will happen naturally if business impact continues to grow. “There is no scenario where we do not expand,” he says. “But my first focus is ensuring that every team reaches a level of maturity where they are recognised as subject matter experts.”
That philosophy encapsulates a broader shift taking place across India’s GCC landscape. As enterprises seek innovation, speed, and strategic value rather than just cost savings, the role of Indian centres is being fundamentally redefined.
For Kapoor, the future belongs to organisations that can demonstrate measurable business impact, regardless of their size. “The story is no longer about how many people you have,” he says. “The story is about the value you create.”
And in an AI-driven era where productivity may matter more than workforce scale, that distinction could become the defining characteristic of the next generation of GCCs.