India leads the world in GCCs – yet many centres may not have fully earned the autonomy and influence they aspire to.
Over the past three decades, Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India have quietly become one of the country’s most powerful growth engines. What began in the 1990s as back-office and IT support operations, driven largely by cost arbitrage, has now matured into a vibrant ecosystem of ~1,700 centres employing nearly 2 million professionals and contributing over $64 billion to the global enterprise economy. By 2030, India is expected to host more than 2,100 GCCs, cementing its position as the “GCC Capital of the World.”
Where once GCCs were set up primarily for cost arbitrage, they now no longer hold the labels or ambitions of just execution arms; they are increasingly expected to be innovation hubs, strategic partners, and talent powerhouses, contributing directly to the core business and creating value for the enterprise beyond just cost advantage. They are asked to lead global product engineering, AI and digital transformation, cybersecurity, and market adaptation.
However, despite their impressive growth and ambitions, many GCCs may still carry the label of “order-takers” among their enterprise teams. GCCs need to evolve from back-office operators to value creators to win more trust, autonomy, and high-value mandates.
Why Does the Evolution towards Innovation Hubs Matter?
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For enterprises, a mature GCC can be more than just a cost saver. It can serve a strategic advantage: a hub that combines speed, scale, and resilience while shaping global product pipelines and driving digital transformation.
For the GCC leaders and teams, it’s about clear career pathways and empowerment: the chance to own global mandates, influence strategy, and grow into leadership roles that are no longer limited to a select few. The clear career pathways can strengthen EVPs to attract and retain top talent in niche skills, for which supply is low but demand is high.
For India, it’s about cementing our role in the global economy: GCCs can position India as the place where global strategy is not only executed, but imagined and driven.
So the question really is: how can GCCs move from efficiency and compliance towards innovation, ownership, and influence?
Key Disrupters to Evolution
A few challenges can be seen repeating across recent literature:
1. Leadership density: India faces a projected shortfall of ~23,000 global leadership roles by 2030 (Zinnov, 2025). Zinnov estimates that the demand for global roles will outpace supply by nearly three times. As the industry currently stands, GCCs tend to rely on a handful of experienced senior leaders, expats, or returning NRIs. Local leaders may have exposure and seats at the global table, but not always true strategic influence or decision-making rights. Without stronger pipelines and readiness initiatives, many centres risk plateauing as “execution hubs.”
2. Trust and autonomy from HQ: According to BCG, globally, 42% of top-performing GCCs share decision-making with their headquarters, compared to only 17% of average performers. Mature GCCs house leaders who own or share global KRAs with HQ. But this trust and autonomy in most cases doesn’t arrive overnight; it’s earned through credibility, delivery excellence, and building trust through not only doing great work, but also making it visible through impactful evangelisation and storytelling. Without it, even talented teams may remain with order-taker status.
3. Culture and identity: Many GCCs struggle to shape an identity that is both locally authentic and globally integrated. Fragmented hybrid teams, imported HQ culture, and a perception of being “second-tier” often undermine belonging and engagement. Without a strong cultural fabric, innovation and collaboration don’t take root.
Beyond the reports and surveys, the conversations we have with GCC leaders often reveal a similar pattern. The talent in India is world-class when it comes to technical expertise – whether in engineering, analytics, or emerging tech. Yet, without parallel focus on leadership and behavioural skills, the GCC’s progress can stall.
We hear comments like:
- “Our leaders and teams are brilliant, but they struggle to translate data into impact stories that resonate with HQ leaders and respond to tough questions with diplomacy.”
- “Teams are capable, but in front of HQ, they hesitate to ‘speak up’ – whether due to cultural deference or simply not being accustomed to challenging perspectives openly.”
- “Our teams are technically skilled, but when it comes to adopting AI, there’s hesitation and resistance to change.”
The problems GCCs face are often not gaps in intelligence or competence, but in ‘softer’ skills and mindsets. Zinnov (2025) highlights that while technical and financial expertise remain important for GCCs, they are secondary to leadership and adaptability. What GCCs prioritize are developing leaders who can align diverse functions, navigate global stakeholders, and build ecosystems that are future-ready.
What Enables Evolution?
Industry research and our experience with clients suggest that GCCs that evolve into true strategic partners consistently invest in a few key enablers. From the lens of leadership, behavioural, and cultural development, these may look like:
1. Innovation & Value Creation
- Building safe cultures where risk-taking, experimentation, diverse viewpoints, and ‘speaking up’ are encouraged and celebrated.
- Cultivating intrapreneurial mindsets to own change and improvements in systems and processes even within mandates and existing levels of autonomy.
- Packaging value created as not just data but stories of impact in the language of HQ.
2. Leadership Development & Density
- Accelerating mid-manager readiness through structured stretch roles, coaching, and rotational programs.
- Moving beyond technical excellence to build abilities in thinking strategically and holistically (keeping the entire system in mind), managing uncertainty, leading change, influencing globally, and coaching the next-in-line.
- Enhancing the employee value proposition (EVP) through localisation and showcasing clear career growth pathways, and ensuring it translates to implementation to attract and retain top talent.
3. Enterprise Integration & Engagement
- Building cross-cultural sensitivity and communication practices which bridge any gaps for smooth collaboration across regions.
- Creating strong virtual / hybrid team management practices to counter attrition through engagement, and create high quality integrated solutions through cross-functional collaboration.
- Cascading enterprise values and strategy while shaping an authentic GCC identity that allows people to see how their contributions matter and feel proud to belong.
Shaping the Next Chapter
When we look at India’s GCC story, we see both pride and paradox. Pride, because no other country has built such a deep pool of technical talent, scale, and reliability. Paradox, because despite all this, many centres are still fighting for the trust, autonomy, and influence they aspire to.
And it is striking that the barrier is rarely about competence. The gap is more often about the “softer” levers like the confidence and strategic mindset to speak up in a global forum, the ability to tell an impact story rather than just share data, the mindset to embrace and lead change rather than resist it. These are the very signals that decide whether a centre is seen as an execution hub or as a true strategic partner. These are the finer pieces which turn credibility into trust, and trust into autonomy.
This is why we believe the next decade for India’s GCCs won’t be defined by cost or capability alone. It will be defined by how seriously we invest in leadership, culture, and behavioural development. The choices leaders make today, to grow their managers into coaches, to nurture psychologically safe and trusting cultures, to give people the tools and courage to influence globally, will shape how the world sees India’s GCCs in 2030.
India is already the GCC capital of the world. The question we keep coming back to is: will we also become the capital of GCC leadership?
