By Uday Inamdar, CEO, Saicon India (Technologies)
Why the next phase of India’s Global Capability Centres will be judged on accountability, not capacity
India’s Global Capability Centre (GCC) ecosystem continues to expand, with more than 100 centres added in FY26, taking the total to 2,117, according to the latest Nasscom-Zinnov report. These centres employ over 2.3 million professionals and generate revenues of nearly $100 billion.
Over five years, the number of GCCs grew 32%, from 1,600 in FY21, while revenues rose 60%, from $61.4 billion to $98.4 billion. The workforce expanded 35% to 2.3 million. Yet, as GCCs take on more complex and business-critical work, the traditional measures of success—headcount, deployment speed and cost savings—are no longer enough.
The questions were suitable for the first chapter of GCC growth, but not the next. These measures indicate how large a centre has become, not how well it performs. The real test is whether it can ensure continuity, reduce dependence on individual employees, standardise processes across locations and improve business outcomes.
This shift is already visible. Around 46% of India’s GCCs now operate as portfolio or transformation hubs, up from 42% in FY21. Nearly 27% of new centres reach this stage within five years, compared with almost a decade earlier. By FY30, close to 75% could evolve into such hubs, the report estimates. With over 250,000 AI professionals and more than 1,200 centres of excellence, India is also strengthening its position in enterprise AI.
The emphasis is moving towards end-to-end business ownership, intellectual property creation and AI-native operations. This makes operational maturity, rather than capacity, the more meaningful measure of success.
From Workforce to Business Function
Moving an operation across borders involves more than transferring tasks. It requires institutional knowledge, an understanding of process interdependencies, clear decision-making authority and agreement on who is accountable when problems arise.
Consider a finance operation moved from Europe to India. Billing, collections, payables, treasury and financial planning are interconnected. Delayed billing affects collections, poor visibility into receivables, weakens cash-flow forecasts, and inconsistent data undermines planning. Relocating employees without addressing these dependencies may reduce costs without improving performance.
Strategic decisions remained with the parent organisation, while the India team took responsibility for day-to-day execution. The model worked because responsibilities were clearly defined.
Recruitment creates a workforce; knowledge transfer, documented processes, controls and performance measurement enable it to run a business function reliably.
Accountability Cannot be Outsourced
Managed GCCs can help companies establish operations, transfer functions and build capabilities. But handing over execution does not mean transferring accountability.
The parent company must retain control over strategy, risk appetite, policy and major business decisions. The provider must handle operational execution, service quality, adherence to controls and resolution of exceptions. Both must share responsibility for transitions, knowledge retention, continuous improvement and emerging risks.
Decision-making authority, escalation procedures, service-level agreements and reporting must be established before operations go live, not after a crisis exposes gaps. Good governance allows the parent company to maintain visibility without micromanaging, while giving the provider enough authority to deliver.
Neither managed nor captive GCCs are inherently superior. Companies with mature centres and strong internal teams may prefer direct control, while others may choose managed arrangements to enter India or build capabilities gradually.
Measure Outcomes, Not Activity
Transaction volumes and processing times show activity, but not necessarily value creation. Finance centres should be assessed on collection efficiency, invoice accuracy, receivables ageing, cash-flow visibility and forecast reliability.
Procurement should be measured on compliance, supplier performance and realised savings, while engineering centres should track product quality, release cycles, reliability and the speed at which new capabilities reach the business.
Three principles apply across functions. First, establish a baseline to distinguish genuine improvement from changes in volume, market conditions or scope. Second, reward accuracy, predictability, risk reduction and continuous improvement, rather than throughput alone. Third, use performance data to remove bottlenecks, address recurring inefficiencies and redesign processes.
AI Needs Operational Foundations
AI can improve productivity, but technology cannot compensate for poorly understood processes or unreliable data. Automating an undocumented workflow can accelerate inconsistencies, while analytics applied to fragmented data may improve visibility without improving decisions.
GCCs must first establish operational continuity, standardise procedures and create performance baselines. Automation, analytics and AI can then transform how work is performed, with clarity on which decisions can be automated, where human judgement remains necessary and how outcomes will be measured.
Forward-deployed engineers (FDEs), who work alongside business teams to connect technology with operational requirements, are gaining relevance. Their value lies in solving specific business problems rather than simply deploying technology.
As GCCs become more integral to global operations, their performance will increasingly depend on how well they institutionalise knowledge, manage risk, improve processes and use technology to deliver measurable results.
The question for leaders is no longer, ‘How quickly can we establish the centre?’ but, ‘What will this centre be accountable for, and how will we know it has delivered?’
A GCC’s long-term value lies not in how quickly it launches or how many people it employs, but in making a business function more reliable, transparent and adaptable and demonstrating that through outcomes that matter to the company.