There was a time when India’s place in the global corporate imagination was easy to summarise. It was efficient, dependable, deep in talent and unmatched in scale. It could absorb complex work, support global teams and keep the engines of large enterprises running with remarkable consistency. For many years, that was enough to make India indispensable.
But that description no longer captures what is really happening, feels Lalit Ahuja, founder & CEO, ANSR. “India’s global capability centre story has moved into a far more strategic phase – one where the country is not merely supporting multinational enterprises but increasingly helping shape how they operate, innovate and grow,” observes Ahuja. “The change is not cosmetic but structural,” he affirms.
Ahuja points to the recent policy moves, relating to ‘Digital India’ and ‘Viksit Bharat’, as powerful signals of this maturity. Measures such as the expansion of the safe harbour framework, faster APA timelines, simplified service classifications and continued investment in cloud and digital infrastructure – they all matter because they reduce uncertainty for companies making multi-year bets.
“India’s positioning as the global epicentre for GCCs has decisively moved from scale to strategic depth,” says Ahuja. “Policy moves reinforce India’s evolution from being a location for distributed delivery to becoming a strategic nerve centre for global enterprises, where product innovation, digital transformation and enterprise-wide capabilities are increasingly owned and shaped.”
This notion captures the heart of what is unfolding. It reflects an India that is no longer being chosen only because it can support the enterprise efficiently, but because it can increasingly help shape the business itself. “Leading GCCs have moved from scale to ownership,” Ahuja says. “They are being set up with end-to-end mandates across engineering, data, cyber-security, finance, customer experience and AI and are increasingly accountable for business outcomes rather than activity.”
For global headquarters and CFOs, these changes affect how confidently a company can scale advanced capabilities in India. “Together, these measures improve predictability and make multi-year investment decisions in AI, engineering and platform buildouts far easier to commit to,” he explains.
Sense of predictability
That sense of predictability is crucial because the mandate of today’s GCCs is dramatically different from what it was even a decade ago. The old model of backend support has given way to something much more embedded in the enterprise operating model.
That distinction is crucial. Activity can be measured in outputs. Outcomes require judgment, accountability and trust. Therein lies the real repositioning of India’s GCCs from cost centres to business-critical engines.
At the same time, Ahuja is careful not to frame this evolution as simple autonomy. The strongest GCCs are not detached innovation units pursuing independent agendas. Their influence comes from disciplined integration into enterprise strategy. “Their growing influence lies not in autonomy for its own sake, but in becoming the trusted execution core, through which enterprises drive product innovation, platform transformation and enterprise-wide change,” he argues.
AI, unsurprisingly, is accelerating this trend. But Ahuja’s view on artificial intelligence is notably grounded. He does not see AI as a theatrical disruption layered on top of existing systems. He sees it as a multiplier – one that rewards strong foundations and exposes weak ones.
“We are already seeing work shifting from execution-heavy processes to higher-value problem solving, with automation handling routine activities while teams focus on product design, risk management and business optimisation,” he says. “However, the GCCs that are truly driving enterprise transformation are not chasing hype. They are anchoring on being business-native, tightly aligned to enterprise goals, trusted for delivery excellence and empowered to innovate with purpose.”
He puts it even more plainly: “AI will accelerate what already works, but only when the foundations are right. It is not a miracle; it is a multiplier.” That realism is important in a business environment where AI can often be spoken about in sweeping abstractions. For Ahuja, the real question is not whether GCCs are using AI, but whether they are using it inside operating models robust enough to generate enterprise value at scale.
That is where India’s talent story becomes especially important. The country’s advantage today is not just that it has a large workforce, but that it increasingly has leadership capable of owning global mandates. Ahuja believes this is what is pushing India toward a far more strategic position within multinational enterprises, particularly across APAC.
“India’s expanding pool of digital and AI-native talent is fundamentally re-shaping its role in global enterprise operations,” he says. “India-based leaders are no longer running sites in isolation. They are running global functions.”
It is a striking observation because it signals a reversal in emphasis. In earlier generations of GCCs, Indian leaders were often measured by their ability to run the site well. Today, in mature centres, many of them are spending most of their time shaping enterprise roadmaps, product strategies, digital platforms and transformation programmes that stretch far beyond India.
“That reversal of emphasis marks a clear break from earlier generations of GCCs,” Ahuja points out. “What is emerging is something more consequential: India-based centres that serve as enterprise nerve centres for digital and AI-driven transformation.”
Going beyond the metros
This evolution is also beginning to alter where GCC growth happens. For years, the story was concentrated in India’s major metros. Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai became synonymous with the sector’s rise. But that map is now broadening. Ahuja sees growing alignment between the Centre and states in building a more distributed GCC ecosystem.
Tier II cities, once viewed as peripheral options, are now becoming viable and in some cases desirable nodes in enterprise operating models. Cities such as Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Indore, Chandigarh and Thiruvananthapuram are increasingly entering the conversation, as companies look beyond the traditional metros for specialised talent, stronger resilience and long-term scalability.
“Over the past decade, Tier II cities have moved from peripheral options to integral nodes in distributed GCC networks, with hub-plus-one or multi-city strategies becoming common,” Ahuja contends. “These choices are driven less by cost arbitrage and more by the availability of skilled talent, improving infrastructure, and operational resilience.”
That change could have consequences far beyond corporate real estate decisions. It points to a more decentralised model of economic development – one in which the benefits of GCC growth spread into new urban clusters and create local ecosystems of talent, suppliers, start-ups and institutions.
Ahuja feels that the ripple effects are already substantial. “Economically, each GCC’s role typically triggers up to 10x indirect jobs across real estate, construction, transport, facilities management, professional services, food services and local SMEs,” he says.
But the impact is not only economic. It is also social and institutional. GCCs are changing curriculum priorities, workforce aspirations and leadership pipelines. They are helping produce specialists in AI, cybersecurity, product engineering and digital operations, while also creating globally deployable business leaders.
“India has become a training ground for future global CIOs, product heads, and operations leaders,” Ahuja says. “This capability building then spills into the broader market through entrepreneurship, spin-offs, academia partnerships and the diffusion of best practices into domestic firms.”
Seen this way, the GCC story is not merely about multinational presence in India. It is about how that presence reshapes the country’s broader economic architecture. And yet, for all the momentum, Ahuja’s framing of the future remains measured and precise. He does not describe the next frontier as some vague leap into innovation. He sees a much more defined destination – orchestration. “The next frontier for GCCs in India is not a distant aspiration,” he says. “It is already underway. Leading centres are moving beyond scale to become orchestration hubs at the heart of global transformation.”
That means owning digital platforms, enterprise data estates, cyber-security command centres and AI industrialisation programmes across markets. It also means integrating talent, operations, compliance and capability-building across distributed networks, including Tier II and III locations.
In that sense, the future GCC is neither just a scaled delivery centre nor just an innovation outpost. It is something more powerful: a control tower for enterprise change. According to Ahuja, that is the real significance of this moment. India is no longer being judged on its ability to support global business from the sidelines. It is being judged on whether it can help lead it.
“India today is being judged on execution, not rhetoric, as a strategic partner in global growth and resilience,” he adds. “The operating model has already changed, and the narrative is catching up.” And, that perhaps is the clearest way to understand where the GCC story now stands. The numbers remain important. The growth remains real. But the deeper story is about trust, ownership and strategic centrality. India has spent years proving it can deliver at scale.
What it is proving now is that it can help define how the global enterprise itself is built!