India's Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are emerging as critical drivers of artificial intelligence (AI) innovation, profoundly reshaping how multinational enterprises formulate and execute their global strategies. According to Rajesh Nambiar, President of Nasscom, these Indian operations are transitioning from mere execution hubs to strategic centers that design, test, and scale AI systems for worldwide deployment.
This significant shift means AI is no longer a peripheral technology project within these centers. Instead, it is being embedded into the core operational fabric of enterprises, influencing product development, internal workflows, and customer-facing functions. Nambiar attributes this transformation to three key structural changes:
Key Shifts Driving AI Integration in GCCs
- Enhanced Governance: A growing number of GCC site leaders, approximately 64%, now hold dual mandates. These mandates combine global business ownership with their India site leadership responsibilities, indicating a higher level of strategic accountability.
- Evolving Nature of Work: GCCs are moving beyond back-office support and technology execution. They are increasingly managing enterprise platforms, developing AI governance frameworks, and driving customer-facing outcomes directly.
- Robust AI Talent Ecosystem: India boasts a substantial AI talent pool, with over 1,200 GCCs possessing AI and machine learning capabilities. This ecosystem is supported by more Pre than 250 AI/ML Centres of Excellence and over 250,000 AI professionals, representing nearly 28% of the global GCC AI talent pool, second only to the US.
As of the fiscal year 2026, India hosts an estimated 2,117 GCCs operating across 3,728 units, employing close to 2.36 million professionals, with the entire ecosystem valued at approximately $98.4 billion. Notably, nearly 50% of GCCs established after FY21 were designed to be AI-first from their inception.
India: The Application and Deployment Layer for Global AI
While global AI models are often developed by hyperscalers and frontier AI labs, Nambiar emphasizes that India is increasingly becoming the essential application and deployment layer. Here, enterprise AI is operationalized at scale, shifting the internal conversation within GCCs from merely building AI to effectively scaling it across diverse business functions.
AI capabilities are now deeply integrated into various enterprise workflows:
- Financial Services: Developing AI-driven systems for underwriting, compliance, risk analytics, and customer intelligence.
- Retail: Building AI-led platforms for pricing and inventory optimization, rolled out across international markets.
- Telecommunications: Creating GenAI-powered transcript analytics and autonomous service workflows to enhance global customer operations.
- Semiconductors & Industrial Engineering: Contributing to AI-accelerated chip design, predictive maintenance systems, and smart manufacturing platforms crucial for global product roadmaps.
India-based teams are also taking on end-to-end ownership of AI systems and contributing to enterprise-wide AI governance standards, platform strategy, and critical technology decisions, moving beyond simple implementation roles.
Measuring Value Beyond Cost
The rise of AI within GCCs is fundamentally altering how multinational companies measure value creation. Traditionally assessed by cost efficiency and operational scale, these centers are now directly linked to business growth, product innovation, and customer outcomes. Nambiar states that GCCs are evaluated not just on the volume of work executed but on the enterprise value they generate.
Mature GCCs are operating with scorecards tied to concrete business outcomes such as productivity gains, customer retention, innovation throughput, and speed-to-market. These advanced centers are becoming strategic value creators and direct enablers of enterprise growth and competitiveness.
AI Reshapes Talent and Hiring
The AI boom is also transforming hiring patterns across GCCs. Enterprises are prioritizing redeployment and AI-led productivity gains over aggressive linear headcount growth, even as demand for specialized AI talent intensifies. AI-centric skills demand has increased by 1.5 percentage points in the past six months alone.
Highly sought-after roles now include AI and ML engineers, MLOps architects, prompt engineers, AI security specialists, RAG architects, and Agentic AI orchestration experts. Moreover, GCCs are adopting more flexible workforce structures, combining a stable core AI team with agile specialist talent deployed for fast-moving projects, adapting to the rapid evolution of AI technology.